Rhian Samuel - Ad Lucem (for solo organ)

These three celebratory pieces by Rhian Samuel were written for David Titterington and the organ of the Duke's Hall at the Royal Academy of Music, London.

That Elton John was one of the main donors of this organ helped inspire the piece, which is up-beat and irreverent. The first movement, a toccata, enthusiastically explores the full range of the keyboard while revealing, half way through, the brief, gentle, melodic figure on which it is based. This figure expands to a full-blown 'maestoso' before the remains of the playful toccata conclude the movement.

The peaceful second movement, 'Amoroso', enlarging on the gentle mood heard briefly in the first movement, is melodic and contrapuntal, employing Baroque figurations; several outbursts protest its anachronism but subside at the end.

The last movement, a scherzo, is the most joyful: inspired by the notion of a fair's turning carousel and its pipe organ, two highly rhythmic ideas are constantly heard in a quasi-rondo while the organ's timbres change and evolve, 'ad lucem'.