Although he spent the first 33 years of his life in England, composer/organist Healey Willan (1880-1968) always has been proudly claimed by Canadians as one of their own, for the most significant part of his career was spent as organist/choir director in one of Toronto’s premier churches. While at the church of St. Mary Magdalene Willan wrote some of his finest works, including a series of beautiful choral motets (try Rise up, my love, Fair in Face, and I beheld her, beautiful as a dove) and numerous organ pieces for which he is still fondly remembered and best known. This first-rate recording by Canadian organist extraordinaire Patrick Wedd focuses on a dozen of Willan’s more important works, including the huge 20-minute-long Introduction, Passacaglia and Fugue, the lovely Five Preludes on Plainchant Melodies, the Bach-influenced Prelude and Fugue in C minor, and the short but affectingly rendered Prelude on “Aberystwyth”. Willan was definitely a Romantic, yet was firmly rooted in the organ’s traditions, owing much to the style and structural formulations of Bach and his 19th-century followers. However, Willan had access to a whole different array of possibilities offered by what at the time was one of the world’s most magnificent instruments: the four-manual, 106-stop Casavant organ at Toronto’s church of St. Paul’s Bloor Street, where he worked for his first seven years after arriving in Canada.
The present recital in fact is given on a similar instrument at Montréal’s Église Saint-Jean-Baptiste, which was built in 1915 and restored by Casavant just 10 years ago. “Formidable” is a good description of this organ, especially as played by Wedd and exploited by Willan’s often grandly-conceived music. The engineering allows you to crank this up to life-like church-acoustic levels without unduly taxing your speakers–and organ fans will certainly be impressed by the specifications included in the liner notes. The concluding Epilogue is a superb example of Willan’s style–ingratiating and ever aware of the music’s purpose, always conscious of beauty, but also mindful of the smallest details and careful to never waste a note. Strongly recommended.
