Prelude: The Forest at Dawn, Op. 78(A)
Prelude, Fanfare and Postlude for Organ, Op. 9
Introduction and Allegro for Solo Organ, Op. 94
Sonata for Organ, Op. 92

Andrew Downes was born in Handsworth, Birmingham, in 1950. He won a choral scholarship to St. John's College, Cambridge in 1969, where he gained an MA degree specializing in composition; and in 1974 went on to study with Herbert Howells at the Royal College of Music. He has written a substantial number of works including several symphonies, concertos, chamber works, an opera, piano works, and a large body of choral music. Yet most of his music remains unrecorded. If this new recording of his organ works is any indication, a renewed interest in his music will hopefully rectify the situation.

Most of his organ music is rather subdued, rapt and contemplative, and in that respect brings to mind the organ music of Olivier Messiaen at its most religiously ruminative, but that's where the comparison ends. Andrew Downes' writing is much more harmonically tonal and rhythmically stable, and is driven forward by a strong grasp of motivic development through diverse repetition. By the end of each piece you know how the music got there. For example, when he does beckon the instrument to open up and to deliver sonic tidal waves through the use of its trumpet reed stops, as in the Allegro movement of the Op. 94 (commissioned by American organist and composer Carson Cooman), it's not merely to impress but also to make a motivic point. Throughout all of these pieces there is always a memorable motivic thread that weaves its way from start to finish, which never leaves the listener stranded in the middle of nowhere like so many of today's composers tend to do.

Organist Robin Walker studied organ at the Royal Academy of Music in London, and is now a teacher with the Royal College of Organists. He certainly makes good use of the elaborate registration of the Harrison and Harrison Organ of Ely Cathedral which was fully restored in 2001, and boasts a wide range of stops from a 1' Flautino to a 32' Sub Bourdon, and the great reeds mentioned above.

If you are a pipe organ music enthusiast and are looking to hear something different and original, I would highly recommend the music of Andrew Downes.