Kenneth Leighton’s organ works definitely stand the test of time with their masterful contrapuntal textures, colourful chromatic but tonal harmony, and skilled organ-writing. One admires his clever use of a 12th-century plainchant in the Missa de Gloria—an organ Mass as fine as the ones by Couperin and Messiaen. Curiously, the theme of Et resurrexit is virtually identical with the melody from the second section of Vaughan Williams’s Flos campi, but again Leighton treats it in a variety of ingenious ways. It’s fascinating to hear his individual approach to familiar melodies in three of the Six Fantasies on Hymn Tunes and it’s a pity that Greg Morris did not record the other three—there was room on the CD.

Another possible cause for regret is the choice of Blackburn Cathedral as the recording venue. Certainly, the 1969 four-manual, 61-stop Walker organ has the appropriate neo-classical colours and a powerful tutti for this repertoire. However, the pipe work is placed on four platforms either side of the chancel arch, so the organ’s tones are projected in different directions. Combined with the cathedral’s generous acoustic, the result is an occasional lack of clarity in Leighton’s polyphony and Greg Morris’s phrasing and articulation. This is a shame, as Morris gives very good performances and he’s well served by the Naxos recording. If you can live with a sound that has intense atmosphere, sometimes at the expense of clarity, then this CD can be recommended to lovers of Leighton’s marvellous organ music.

The rehabilitation of Kenneth Leighton’s music on compact disc in recent times has been one of the most gratifying. I suspect that on his death in 1988 the received wisdom was of an academic who composed. But with discs such as this and the series of orchestral works on Chandos in particular he is emerging from the shadow of that faint praise as a composer of real and enduring stature. As will be clear, I was familiar with none of these works before receiving this disc but what a fabulous discovery it has proved to be. On every level, musically and technically, I have rarely enjoyed a recital of organ music more. The organ of Blackburn Cathedral seems ideally suited to the sinewy power of Leighton’s writing and organist Greg Morris produces a bravura display of thrilling impact. Credit too to producer David Gibbs and engineer David Hinitt who have struck an ideal balance between the visceral excitement of a big instrument playing at full tilt but placing in a church acoustic without losing internal detail. It really is one of the finest recordings of an organ I have heard in a long time.

A quick trawl through the catalogue shows that there is a 3-disc set on Priory of the complete organ works played by Dennis Townhill but that is at full-price. So for a single disc recital and at bargain price this disc provides an ideal introduction to Leighton’s compositions for solo organ. There is a cunning through-thread to the programming here. All three works are based on germ-like material from which the works develop and evolve. This is a compositional trick that Leighton often uses but here the germ is provided by pre-existing hymn tunes in the case of the Six Fantasies or the plain song chant mentioned before in the Missa de Gloria. The use of existing sacred musical material makes these works extended latter-day chorale-preludes and part of Leighton’s genius is the seamless way he is able to fuse ancient with modern and his own powerfully individual musical identity to clearly recognisable motifs. The disc opens with the wonderfully theatrical Et Resurrexit of 1966. Organist Greg Morris provides a succinct but informative liner-note and in this he quotes Leighton’s description of the work as an attempt; “to give musical expression to the individual’s struggle for belief in the miracle of the resurrection”. This is a substantial seventeen minute work which is broken down into three rather dry-sounding sections; Theme, Fantasy and Fugue. Morris is excellent both in the note but more so in the performance at articulating how Leighton takes a simple four note motif which although original (I assume) has the stepwise simplicity of a chant. All more....

Review By Brian Wilson Download Roundup,MusicWeb International,June 2011

The organ that I knew in my home town of Blackburn has been replaced and the replacement rebuilt since I moved away. I don’t know what my old music teacher, who was the cathedral organist, would say about how it now sounds—or, indeed, about the music of Kenneth Leighton, which wasn’t on the curriculum back then. For me it produces just the right sound for Leighton’s organ music. I knew that it’s a fine instrument for Alkan’s organ music…and I imagine that that it would sound equally well for Messiaen. Indeed, I hear more than a touch of the influence of the French organ school in Leighton’s music, though it’s far from imitative. This new recording joins Naxos’s equally recommendable disc of Leighton’s choral music, An Easter Sequence (Naxos 8.555795).