Matthew Martin, Organ Passacaglia

A lunchtime organ recital of about 55 minutes without interval, titled "Passacaglia", given at Smith Square Hall as part of the London Festival of Baroque Music. Organist Matthew Martin, Precentor and Director of Music at Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, explores how musical ideas change as they pass through different composers and centuries. At the programme's centre stand two monumental passacaglias: J S Bach's famous Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor, BWV 582, and the powerful Passacaille by Swiss composer Frank Martin, written nearly two centuries later and refracting Bach's work through a twentieth-century harmonic language. The programme also links the French organ tradition through Nicolas de Grigny and Gaston Litaize, and adds lighter English works by Peter Hurford and the recitalist before concluding with Bach's Contrapunctus XI from The Art of Fugue.