Divertimento on "Monkland"

Heathcote Dicken Statham, CBE (1889-1973) was educated at Gresham's School, Holt and at St Michael’s College, Tenbury, Caius College, Cambridge and at the Royal College of Music under Sir Walter Parratt.
He was Organist at Calcutta Cathedral (1913), St Michael’s Tenbury ((1920), Southampton Parish Church (1928) and at Norwich Cathedral from 1928 to 1966. His compositions were mainly for organ, especially worthy of note being the "Four Diversions," the "Rhapsody in C" (1927) the "Divertimento on Monkland", and "Rhapsody on a Ground" (1944). He also wrote a few anthems, carols, a Te Deum dedicated to the present Queen, and other services, the hymn tune "Arncliffe", one or two secular partsongs and an operetta "The New Master," for boys’ voices dating from around 1920 when he was at Tenbury.

"Divertimento on 'Monkland' " dates from 1956 and was published by Novello. I've had for years but never did anything with it, as it's a very tricky little thing. Composed in a sort of "neo-Baroque toccata style" it features a lot of "sticky passages" in contrary motion, and cleverly uses the theme for almost all aspects of the piece - accompaniment, counter melodies, etc. The work starts with 8' & 2' stops on the Choir and builds to Full Organ in around 2 minutes time.

I prepared this for upload the other day and was just about to post it when I found Statham's own recording from the 1960s. My tempo was virtually identical with his, but he played it "straighter" with less "grace" at the ends of phrases. I thought that his approach was better, so, I did it over, and I'm pleased with how it came out.

Incidentally, "Monkland" is not an amusement park for cloistered clerics!!! ;-)
It's the name of the hymn-tune that the piece is based upon. The melody of which was adapted by J. Antes (1740-1811) from a melody by J.A. Freylinghausen (1670-1739).