Allegro maestoso (Sonata for Organ, Op. 28) Edward Elgar
First Flight, Cecilia McDowall
Light in darkness, Kerensa Briggs
Big Fish Eat Little Fish, Udi Perlman
Fantasie und Fuge über “Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern“, Op. 30, Johanna Senfter
Benedictus, Op. 59, No. 9, Max Reger
Toccata (Suite pour Orgue, Op. 5), Maurice Duruflé

American organist Carolyn Craig, FRCO MMA, is the Assistant Director of Music at Wells Cathedral.

Programme note: Big Fish Eat Little Fish

Big Fish Eat Little Fish is inspired by a mid-16th century engraving of the same name by Pieter Bruegel, the elder. The allegorical image illustrates a Latin proverb relating to the perpetual cycle in which the rich and powerful oppress the weak. Bruegel’s surreal image reveals many small and large fish oozing out of an enormous fish stranded on the shore. In my piece I wanted to convey the sense of overflow and recursion which characterise Bruegel’s artwork. Texturally, the piece is written in the genre of a perpetuum mobile, a continuous stream of notes. The piece’s harmonic language and formal design is derived from a single sonority – the major 7th chord. Through obsessive kaleidoscopic rotations, this harmony is articulated on various time scales, like a fractal shape whose parts are similar to the whole at many levels of magnification. Like the incessant churning of the capitalist machine, I wanted the organ to sound like an overflowing, fantastic labyrinth, where there is always a bigger fish lurking around the corner.

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