The very best of Andrew Davis (1): Organ voluntary
Daily Comfort ZoneAmong Sir Andrew’s forgotten talents…. what a touch!
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Being rightly so well remembered in Australia
Conductor Sir Andrew Davis has died aged 80 – ABC News
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-04-22/conductor-sir-andrew-davis-has-died-aged-80/103755288
Beautiful playing
I’ve just dug out my copy of this recording, but on the Carlton/IMP Classics reissue, for a reminder of his stature as an organist. The old Argo recordings of his accompanying The Choir of King’s College Chapel, Cambridge, especially the 1964 Nine Lessons and Carols and 1967 chora music of Herbert Howells, are also must haves. Time for a Sir Andrew Davis Festival, methinks.
Following the spring assassinations in the US, I spent the summer of 1968 in Europe undertaking (in part) a tour of organs and organists. Its planning was beyond halfbaked: I missed Heiller, my chief pursuit, in Haarlem, also overlooking there Yuko Hayashi, later a good friend; missed Walcha in Frankfurt after driving thither all night; did get to hear Dupre in St Sulpice and Cochereau in Notre Dame ….
But the musical high point of the summer was somehow meeting Andrew Davis at the Haarlem competition — turning practice pages for him, hanging with him generally, drinking excessive genever in my hostel room. He was exceedingly kind to a younger wannabe organist, even inviting timid me to essay the opening page of S.533 on the Bavokerk instrument (! — of course not).
We spent a high few days together even as he did not win (Isoir again), and only 8 years later, a career change if not a lifetime, we reconnected in Boston, where I was now a newspaper editor and sometime music critic and he was debuting with the BSO. Famous by then, he was altogether as gracious and musically absorbing over lunch as those years earlier.
RIP, dear Andrew.