ANTHONY Gowing was doing the talking four nights later, examining the salient parts of the life of Edwin Lemare, the man who was organist (1886-92) in the building we were in when it was Sheffield Parish Church, before playing some of his music.
Related in easy-going style, the talk was laced with humour and illustrated with rare photographs, projected on a screen, Anthony had secured: the shots of the huge American audiences Lemare played to were amazing, while from a local point of view, w
e saw how the cathedral looked in Lemare's time.
Even more interesting was the interior of the Albert Hall in Barker's Pool (gutted by fire in 1937) with a magnificent French-built organ – no wonder Lemare kept coming back to play it!
One wonders how he would have reacted to the cathedral's present, four-manual electronic organ, surely now well passed temporary status.
It took all of the cathedral's assistant master of the music's considerable keyboard skills to make Lemare's transcription of Wagner's Mastersingers Overture work and certainly wasn't his fault that it lacked resonance: ditto, the Concert Fantasia Op 91.
The Carmen Fantasia came over quite well, thanks to Anthony calling on his technical prowess to fight the instrument to get to the desired sounds, his feel for shaping music being obvious in five quieter pieces, including the Andantino that became Moonlight and Roses.
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