Rogg / Sixten / Forbes / Wammes / Chapple / Hagen: Capriccio – Phillips, Margaret

   in Choir & Organ (Sep, 2014)
Margaret Phillips presents a survey of largely tonal contemporary music for organ, ranging from Sebastian Forbes’s spiky works from around 1970, via Lionel Rogg’s well-known partita on ‘Nun freut euch’ to some groovy Dutch minimalism from Ad Wammes and Zwolle organist Toon Hagen. The highlight is the other offering from Lionel Rogg, his Hommage a Franz Liszt, composed in 2011. Rogg brilliantly captures Liszt’s mercurial musical personality but views it through an entirely personal filter. Margaret Phillips is at her best in this repertoire and plays brilliantly, but the organ, although in the repertoire to which it should be best suited, disappoints: 62 stops, squeezed into Bodley’s case at the expense …