Talk to any music fan in Melbourne/Naarm about the Organ in Melbourne Town Hall, and they will say with pride how it is one of the largest in the Southern Hemisphere, one of the finest instruments in the world, and how it produces a truly earth-shattering sound when experienced at full throttle.

Well, on this drizzly Melbourne evening, the grand dame of Melbourne was in true full-throttled force in Voluminum.

Voluminum, Melbourne Town Hall. Photo © Evan J Lawson

Opening the performance was Györg Ligeti’s iconic 1960s organ work Volumina. One of only three organ works by the composer, and his only work (to my knowledge) that uses a purely graphic notation, this fascinating 15-minute work beautifully dances between deeply structured modernism and a silly, almost comical pastiche of the modern sound – a dance that Ligeti performs so very well.

This being his centenary year, I was delighted to hear this work in the flesh – and played brilliantly by WA-based organist Stewart Smith. He did indeed walk the line Ligeti’s music so often calls for; between exaggerated gestures, supple softs, to virtuosic and complex sound-making. Smith’s performance was a tour-de-force...