Here is some popular music (surely everyone knows Verdi’s “Grand March” from Aida): here is some organ music (including an atmospheric account of Vierne’s Clair de lune): and here is some music which is neither popular nor for organ. I wouldn’t have thought there is much justification in calling this disc “Popular Organ Music”. But then again, with such a hotchpotch of a programme anyone would be hard-pressed to think of a suitably snappy title.
Rupert Gough certainly enjoys the jazz-inspired pieces (by Planyavsky, Brubeck and Bovet) which are, for me, the most interesting items on the disc and he plays them with reliable solidity. (He also clearly enjoys Ronald Watson’s appalling Happy Birthday, Herr Bach which might have caused amusement at its first performance but on disc is downright embarrassing.) Otherwise his playing seems tense and non-committal. I can’t imagine his pedestrian accounts of Bach/Vivaldi, Susato and Messiaen are the result of real affection for these pieces. The recording – muddy and lacklustre – does nothing to enhance Gough’s playing.'