What: Auckland Town Hall Organ Official Opening Concert
Where and when: Auckland Town Hall, Sunday March 21 at 3.30pm; also broadcast live on National Radio
What: Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra, with Thomas Trotter
Where and when: Auckland Town Hall, Thursday (sold out) and Saturday March 27, at 8pm
What: Thomas Trotter recital
Where and when: Auckland Town Hall, Sunday March 28, at 2.30pm
Auckland City Organist and composer John Wells has every justification to be proud tomorrow afternoon, along with all the others who have devoted so much energy to the restoration of the town hall organ. All will be revealed at a grand concert, featuring Wells, three choirs and an orchestra - an event that may rival the splendour of the occasion that inaugurated the newly built hall in December 1911.
The organ's 5291 pipes include a world first - pipes based on the Maori koauau and pukaea, featured in Wells' new Organ Symphony, which will receive its premiere. Not surprisingly, the instrument, painstakingly worked on by Philipp Klais and his German organbuilders, is a 40-tonne package.
Next week, the celebrations continue. Noted English organist Thomas Trotter plays two concerts with Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra, followed by a recital of his own. Trotter, who has held the post of City of Birmingham organist for 27 years, admits it was the sheer scale of the instrument that wooed him from the piano.
"For an 11-year old, it's quite nice to make a lot of noise," he laughs. "That was what initially attracted me. I've got quite small hands and the piano repertoire was beyond my reach physically. You don't have that problem with an organ because you've got your feet to help out."
This man who will talk fervently on issues of Bach interpretation is not restricted to organ lofts. Trotter also enjoys giving the occasional Wurlitzer concert and has a special fondness for Dutch fairground organs ("just the style of them, with all those chromatic notes, the drums thumping away and the triangles going").
While Trotter will give the new organ an Olympian workout in Saint-Saens' Third Symphony with the APO next week, he also has a concerto spot. "Poulenc's 1938 Concerto shows the organ in a good light," he says. "Poulenc just put it with strings and timpani because the organ is like an orchestra in itself."
In a work of "many different moods, the fast moments are very bright and breezy and the slow moments very affecting and emotional", he says. "Poulenc's really wearing his heart on his sleeve."
We ponder on the many French composers such as Guilmant, Vierne and Widor primarily known for their organ music and Trotter reminds me he studied with the legendary French organist Marie-Claire Alain in the 1970s. Alain introduced him to "the importance of authentic playing editions, which had never occurred to me", although his fondness for his previous teacher, New Zealander Dame Gillian Weir, remains undimmed.
"Gillian was very hot on registration, articulation and technique. She has a real sense of performance and would never let you play in a boring way because she'd always have something interesting to say about the music."
Now, undertaking his first visit to New Zealand, he points out isolation has its rewards: "Because you're so far from anywhere, you have many English instruments in their original condition, such as those in the Dunedin and Wellington town halls. In England, most instruments of that vintage have been altered beyond recognition. But, I'm primarily interested in the music, rather than the machine."
His own town hall recital, just over a week away, ranges from the obligatory Bach to an Edward Bairstow Sonata he describes as "pernickety but with an expansiveness that you find in Elgar and Vaughan Williams".
Two Edwin Lemare Wagnerian transcriptions, including The Ride of the Valkyries, were also included in the Auckland Town Hall inaugural celebrations 100 years ago, dealing in the sort of colours that test both organ and organist.
"Orchestral music is constantly in a state of flux so you've got to keep the flow of music while managing those stop changes," he says.
"There can't be bumps in the music."
Trotter is not quite sure how Eric Coates' Princess Elizabeth March got into the programme but "it's a fun piece", he says. "Most people know Coates' Dam Busters March. This is very similar but rather better and I've heard people in New Zealand like the Queen ... I'm sure it will do very well."
