Pulling out all stops for Bach recording

By WILLIAM DART

John Wells doesn't like to be called a freelance organist; he's simply a freelancer. As well as being a professionally qualified organist, he is a pianist, a teacher, broadcaster and a busy composer.

We're here to talk organs, and at first he seems less than optimistic about the instrument's future. "Whether the organ is a king or a dinosaur in New Zealand is an open question," he laments. "We've suffered so much marginalisation."

He admits, with a laugh, that marginalisation is one of his "favourite buzzwords" and when he was Auckland City organist - he was surprised a few days ago to learn his appointment had been discontinued - one of his tasks was to see this didn't happen. His brief was to increase the profile of the instrument, "and not just as a background to singers, wallpaper music or playing the old G major chord at the end of the Enigma Variations."

With the regular Auckland Town Hall organ recitals attracting audiences of 400-500, it's not surprising Wells believes "town halls rather than churches are where the next big chapter of the organ might be written".

Alas, it now seems these concerts might be no more, which would be a great loss to the city. "The whole thing was growing more than The Edge [management] was comfortable with and such a unique thing as this can't be handled within a dollar-driven situation, or with a council mindset," says Wells.

Our civic organ is the biggest in the country. But, like that old grey mare, she ain't what she used to be, ever since the instrument was emasculated by the organ reform movement. "We got the transparent sound but we lost the power. With an orchestra and choir you can barely hear it."

He's hoping the town hall organ's restoration will be completed by 2011. There's talk of creating a trust so grants can be applied for, and the projected cost of it all is around $2.5 million. "The city council have a duty," Wells stresses. "The organ was gifted to the city by Henry Brett in 1910 on the understanding it was to be available for the citizens.

"Wellington and Dunedin town halls have very fine organs in that grand tradition and they've been lovingly restored. We want to restore ours to what people remember as a splendid instrument."

This last week has also seen the completion of Wells' 10-year project of recording Bach's complete Well-Tempered Clavier on organ, using not a town hall instrument but three smaller ones in Hamilton, Auckland and Rotorua.

The fruits of his labours are, as he puts it, four discs, 96 pieces and, all in all, four hours and 20 minutes of organ playing.

Why organ? "Why not?" he counters. Bach was, as usual, fairly vague about what instrument might be used and perhaps, Wells suggests, "a lot of it is really virtual music - it's the notes that count".

And count they do, in the many vivid colours of the three instruments. The third and final instalment, a double CD, focuses on the second book of the Bach.

There's grandeur in the G minor Prelude, a bracing brassiness in the A major Fugue, and dancing flutes in the G major Prelude, all rendered with crisp, idiomatic playing. Producer Michael Grafton-Green has caught the Aplin organ in Rotorua's St Luke's to perfection.

And this was no easy recording task. "A church is a partially controlled recording environment at best. Every creak, rumble, passing traffic, wind change and temperature change can be a hazard. In Rotorua we found the microphones picked up subterranean noises and you can hear the occasional bloop."

In the final count, Wells feels the discs are "a tribute to the organmakers, as every single stop is good quality stuff. This shows the domestic side of music at its best - intimate, social, music for the sheer relaxing pleasure of it all." Every home should have all three.

* John Wells, The Well-Tempered Organ Vols 1, 2 and 3 (Ribbonwood RCD 1006, 1007, 1008)