This is the sort of experience which makes small boys want to become organists. Not only is it first-class entertainment, far surpassing in musicianship any rival in this field that I can think of, but the music is expertly driven, Rawsthorne knowing just when to surge and when to cruise. There are echoes of Toscanini's well-timed impatience in the Aida march, a Beecham quality in the mustering of trumpets just before the recapitulation in the Mendelssohn Wedding March and a get-up-and-go vigour in Stars and Stripes, which would win any war by itself. Rawsthorne's arrangements do not spare the player, and faithfulness to the original is happily the rule, though, of course, Jeremiah Clarke's brief sketch is invested with an opulence undreamed of in Danish philosophy—and the Londonderry Air swells to proud dimensions before expiring gracefully more than once.
Noel Rawsthorne is one of the few organists I know who is a true 'large-building player', whose phrasing no echo will defeat and the clarity of whose part-playing refuses (like Methuselah's natural force) to be abated. Coventry Cathedral is, I know, child's play after Liverpool, but this technique deserves study. Wholeheartedly recommended.'