Obituary - Simon Preston (1938 - 2022)

by David Smith

NEWS broke over the weekend of the death on May 13 of organist Simon Preston, renowned as both a choir director and a recitalist, with a particular reputation for performing the organ works of Messiaen.

Simon Preston, from "A Conversation with Bruce Duffie"

It is, of course, in the nature of obituaries that they are often written at short notice; Preston’s first solo recording was itself made under similar though far more daunting conditions, with him receiving just one week’s warning that he was to record the formidable L’Ascension. His prior studies had prepared him well for this unexpected solo debut, working with C H Trevor at the London’s Royal Academy of Music and with David Willcocks at King’s College Cambridge, as well as appearing on a recording of sacred music by Gibbons, and it proved to be the first of many highly successful recordings.

Preston conquered numerous peaks of the Romantic organ repertoire; Reubke’s Sonata on the 94th Psalm, Liszt’s Ad nos, ad salutarem undam, Poulenc’s organ concerto and of course Saint-Saëns’ ever-popular Organ Symphony, which he recorded with the Berliner Philharmoniker in 1986. His complete survey of Bach’s organ works, begun the following year and concluded in 2000, was described by the Penguin Guide simply as “first class in every way” and alongside his complete recordings of Handel’s organ concertos shows his deeply scholarly approach to earlier repertoire – drawing on the best musicological thinking available.

He also made his mark as a conductor, leading the choir at Christ Church Oxford in the 1970s and Westminster Abbey in the 1980s, both of which tenures resulted in rich crops of recordings of early choral music. While interpretative tastes have evolved over the ensuing decades, Preston’s approach continues to be revered to this day. After leaving Westminster in 1987, conducting started to feature more prominently in his musical life, particularly of larger-scale choral and oratorio works and again often favouring Handel.

Given Preston’s impressive command of several arenas of music-making, the fact that he composed much of Salieri’s music for the 1984 film Amadeus - music intended, in the film, to demonstrate the composer’s second-rate gifts and inability to compete with true genius – seems rather ironic. As a lynchpin of both the organ and choral worlds, there was absolutely nothing second-rate about Preston himself; his extensive recorded legacy as a performer speaks for itself, but just as important (if less visible) is the impact he had on generations of younger musicians as an educator at Christ Church, Westminster and elsewhere.

First published at prestomusic.com May 16, 2022