In 2013 Oxford’s Merton College unveiled its new Dobson organ, a three-manual, 44 stop instrument, built in the US and voiced on English Romantic lines. An acclaimed first recording (7/14) consisted of a mixed programme of Bach, Dupré, Messiaen and Stanley. For this second volume, Merton’s Director of Music, Benjamin Nicholas, displays his Elgarian credentials in a typically unfussy and well-balanced selection of original and transcribed works.

He opens with the substantial Op 28 Sonata in G of 1895, in a lithe performance, full of beautifully shaped phrasing. His imaginative brush strokes help to emphasise Elgar’s strongly contrapuntal approach in this tightly organised and quasi-symphonic work. There are some lovely ‘singing’ registers, particularly at 8ft pitch in the Allegretto, and in the Andante espressivo Nicholas calculates just the correct amount of hesitancy and Elgarian introspection, aided by some shimmering string registers. The finale spins along with a jaunty virility. All that is missing is the clarion call from a true English Tuba stop in the energetic closing paragraph, the Major Trumpet lacking the requisite heft. However, this stop has a much more effective impact in William Harris’s transcription of ‘Nimrod’, which is built up to perfection.

Edwin Lemare’s delightful transcription of the early violin Gavotte is reminiscent of Sullivan at his most dainty, crossed with a hint of the fairground organ. Of greater interest is the Prelude to The Kingdom, the last and most technically challenging of Herbert Brewer’s organ transcriptions, here receiving its first (and authoritative) recording. Elgar’s only other original organ work, the eight Vesper Voluntaries, Op 14, rounds off this enjoyable disc in polished and affectionate style.