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From the Reverend Richard Coles:Ìý
One off the bucket list this week - I got to play the organ in the Royal Albert Hall. For an amateur organist this is like getting the chance to fly Concorde when you’ve only got three and half hours flying time in a crop-sprayer; for the organ at the Albert Hall is one of the mightiest in the world, ten thousand pipes, 150 stops, four keyboards plus pedals, played by everyone from Bruckner to McFly. And now me. It came about because Olivier Latry, organist of Notre Dame in Paris, is appearing at the Proms in Sunday, and I was asked to interview him.Ìý
Yes please. Olivier is not only a great musician, he is possibly the greatest improviser in the world. Sunday by Sunday at Mass he creates a piece of music out of nothing but genius, nerve five keyboards, pedals, and eight thousand pipes, looking like a dismantled battleship packed in a mezzanine. Sunday by Sunday, until the terrible fire that took out the roof just before Easter; not the organ, fortunately, but it can’t be played during restoration work. Paris’ temporary loss is London’s gain, if I can put it like that; and mine too, I thought, flexing my fingers at the keyboard, wondering which timeless hit of the eighties to take as my theme.Ìý
Actually, The Birdie Song would sound like Doomsday played on that organ if you pull out all the stops and hit everything at once. I did, and it was like pressing the detonator button and seeing three cooling towers fall to the ground half a mile away. A mad glint entered my eye before I was courteously asked to leave Olivier to his practise. And then the revelation. I sat in the empty hall as he played a piece so soft and tender it broke the heart rather than the eardrum. There’s a guy lives near me who has souped up his moped so it sounds like Barry Sheene doing a wheelie up Church Hill; whenever I hear it I think of the clamour and braggadocio of our world, the brute row of people trying to drown each other out by shouting the loudest and the stupidest; but in the middle of all that, if you have ears to hear, there endures the still, small voice of calm, with a better idea.