Elgar / Nyman / Handel / Walton / Boyce / Anon: A Shropshire Idyll – Trotter, Thomas

   in Choir & Organ (Jul, 2014)
The centrality of Ludlow’s St Laurence Church to England’s realpolitik has conspicuously dimin- ished since its leading role during the later years of the Wars of the Roses and throughout the Tudor and early Stuart periods. But it retains an abiding allure through its associations with the poet A.E. Housman (whose ashes are interred there) and to a long history dominated by its organ.

Elements of the current instrument date back to a three-manual 1764 Snetzler whose 250th anniversary prompts this rich and relishable recital by the ever-reliable Thomas Trotter. Added to by Joseph Walker and Gray & Davidson, and subsequently rebuilt in 1911 by John Hill and in 1981 by …