James McVinnie: Fantasias

Celebrated for his embrace of eclectic musical styles from the Renaissance to the present day, organist James McVinnie continues his year as a Southbank Centre Resident Artist in this, the first of two recitals.

Built around musical fantasias and showing myriad facets of the Royal Festival Hall’s historic organ, it begins by exploring three very different British composers.

McVinnie opens with the richly expressive Fantasia and Toccata in D minor by Charles Villiers Stanford.

Next, William Byrd’s longest Fantasia takes us back to the Renaissance, often termed the ‘golden age’ of English music, with boundless imagination and keyboard virtuosity.

Riff-Raff, by the contemporary composer Giles Swayne, was inspired by an exploration of music in Senegal, rhythmic, fantastical and joyous.

The concert finishes with the magnificence of Franz Liszt unleashed in a giant musical extravaganza: his Fantasia and Fugue on ‘Ad nos, ad salutarem undam’.