An Australian musical anniversary that falls this year, but one I suspect very few of us will have been hitherto aware of, is that of the first public performance on a pipe organ. This occurred just over 200 years on 15 May, 1825 on an instrument that had been acquired from London and installed at St David’s Cathedral in Hobart (the instrument now resides a few miles east at St Matthew’s Anglican Church, Rokeby).

For Victorian-based concert organist Thomas Heywood it serves as an excellent excuse to present a celebratory concert on the Melbourne Town Hall Grand Organ, and a free concert at that (courtesy of support from the City of Melbourne).

That particular instrument’s history is a little more recent – while the original Melbourne Town Hall had an organ installed in 1872, it was destroyed in a fire some 100 years ago. A replacement, however, was installed in 1929 and it was also extensively refurbished in 2001.

Today it stands as the largest instrument of its kind in the southern hemisphere and Heywood has devised a program that shows it off in an appropriately grand style.