Edward Elgar - Vesper Voluntaries (digital)

This recording of Elgar's Vesper Voluntaries (op. 14) was performed by Richard Apperley on the Norman and Beard organ at St James' Presbyterian Church, Newtown. The church has recently closed and is due to be demolished during 2012 due to dwindling worshippers and rising insurance premiums following the Christchurch earthquakes. The church has also been deemed an earthquake risk by the Wellington City Council, and the cost of alterations to the building are beyond the means of the church. It is fitting, therefore, that the final recording made on this fine instrument is a performance of Elgar's Vesper Voluntaries - a set of short pieces to be played at the Vespers service held at the end of the day.

This recording was made on Sunday 8 January, 2012 - a rainy summer day. As a result, there is a noticeable amount of noise in the building, particularly drips from the leaky roof. The decision was made to treat this as a recital style recording - many of the movements are recorded in a single take, with multiple takes only being used when the noise became overly intrusive. Our aim was to create an accurate representation of the organ and how it sounds in the building.

The Voluntaries were written while Elgar was organist at St George's Roman Catholic Church in Worceseter - a small instrument with a very similar specification to that at St James' Newtown.

As a tribute to the church and its congregation, one track (movement VII) is available as a free download by clicking here..

Members of the St James' congregation and those closely associated with the church are able to download this album for no charge - please contact Richard using the contact form above and he will email you a direct link for download.

Please note that this album is not available as a physical CD, only as a MP3 download.

Producer and session engineer - Kyle Macdonald
Editing and post-production - Richard Apperley