Repertoire and Performances
While a student, he performed the complete organ symphonies of Charles-Marie Widor, Louis Vierne and Marcel Dupré (none of which he has yet recorded), and the complete organ music of Olivier Messiaen. He was able to do this because, he says, "When I was 21, I developed a technique that allowed me to learn a French organ symphony every month" and "always started at the end and then worked backwards." His debut recital was at the Royal Festival Hall in 1984.
He has won the following competitions, though he says "the standard hasn't been all that impressive":
- St Albans International Organ Festival 1983 (neither 2nd nor 3rd prize was awarded that year)
- Odense International Organ Competition 1990
- Paisley International Organ Festival 1990
- Dublin International Organ and Choral Festival 1990
- Calgary International Organ Festival 1990
He has performed and broadcasted all over the world, and has released around ninety recordings, including all of Bach's organ music for the Nimbus recording label. His recital repertoire is enormous and ever expanding; in an article restricted to European organ music of the twentieth century, he mentions over one hundred composers whose music he has played. Though he sees contemporary music as his vocation, he plays organ music from the Renaissance and Baroque periods onwards, and has shown an appreciation for the qualities of historical instruments in such music.
He is the only person to have played and recorded Kaikhosru Sorabji's First Organ Symphony in its entirety.
| “ | That it is finally becoming known, more than sixty years later, is due entirely to the uniquely enterprising spirit, astounding prowess and unending and unbending patience and dedication of the most outstanding organist of his generation, who, in his continuing work in preparing for performance and recording Sorabji's Second and Third Organ Symphonies (which of necessity includes fair-copying them longhand), is singlehandedly rewriting the history of organ music since Liszt. | ” |
| — Alistair Hinton, 1988 |
He was organist of the Parish of Warwick from 1989 until 1998; during this time, he taught around the country for the St Giles International Organ School. In 2005 he was appointed university organist at the University of Glasgow (with access to the Harrison & Harrison/Willis organ in the University Memorial Chapel), while continuing his teaching career at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester and the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow. New projects include the annual Glasgow International Organ Festival and Glasgow Pipeworks series of recitals of new music for organ.
On learning music, he says: "I practise bits and pieces of it over and over again until my fingers are moving faster than my brain, then I home in on what is difficult and link these with the easier passages, but the easier passages are still no less learned than the difficult ones. Sometimes it's necessary to practise for twelve to fourteen hours a day, during which you need to keep your mind alert." A particular example has been when he had to learn Niccolo Castiglioni's Sinfonia Guerriere et Amorose, 41 minutes of "nearly unplayable music. I set my mind to encompass it in an eight-day learning period, a frame-work the piece naturally slipped into."
Since 2008 he has been able, with the support of the Glasgow University Trust, to be engaged almost exclusively in preparing for performances of Sorabji's three organ symphonies, the difficulty of which is considerable:
| “ | In my career as a player of contemporary organ music I've played most of the notorious, "super-difficult" pieces—Iannis Xenakis' Gmeeoorh, Brian Ferneyhough's Sieben Sterne, Niccolò Castiglioni's Sinfonie Guerriere et Amorose, etc. Sorabji's First Organ Symphony makes all those pieces look like grade 2 finger exercises. And Organ Symphony 2 makes Organ Symphony 1 look like—a grade 2 finger exercise. | ” |
| — Kevin Bowyer |
The lengths are also considerable: the Second Symphony alone is over an hour longer than Messiaen's complete organ music put together. The Second Symphony was premiered in 2010 and there were several postponements due to the incredible difficulty of learning it. The Third Organ Symphony is expected to be premiered in 2014 in Glasgow. Recordings of the three works are to be made, but not by Altarus Records as originally planned. Bowyer is also preparing new editions of the scores for publication.
Read more about this topic: Kevin Bowyer
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