Daniel Cook to be next organist at Durham Cathedral

I thought members of the forum might be interested to know that Daniel Cook has been appointed to succeed James Lancelot as Master of the Choristers and Organist at Durham Cathedral. The details can be found at https://www.durhamcathedral.co.uk/news/daniel-cook-organist-durham-cathedral.

Daniel left Salisbury from St David's cathedral and then moved on to be assistant at Westminster Abbey.

Daniel was the assistant organist at Salisbury Cathedral when the HW sample set of the Willis organ was made by MDA. Durham is a(nother) wonderful Willis organ in a magnificent acoustic. There are many fine records available of the organ at Durham (and an excellent DVD from Priory) featuring James Lancelot's outstanding playing.

I would like to congratulate Daniel on this appointment and sincerely hope he enjoys working in what I regard is the most wonderful cathedral in the world!

Iain

[mdyde]

Indeed. Congratulations, Daniel!

I'm confused . . . the Durham Cathedral website seems to say that the organ there is a Harrison?

The organ was built by Father Willis and rebuilt on several occasions by Harrison & Harrison (the local firm). Many other cathedral organs in the U.K., including Salisbury, have also been rebuilt by H&H.

Iain

Strictly true, yes.
But Durham has been in Harrisons' hands since 1904, whereas they have only had Salisbury and Hereford since 1978 (according to NPOR), so it is probably fair to describe Durham as a H&H after 103 years.

More importantly, from 1905 the Durham organ was rebuilt and revoiced to Arthur Harrison's tonal ideals. It was a landmark project for the firm, and eventually emerged sounding distinctively H&H. (It is also now nearly twice the size of the original Willis). H&H restored and rebuilt many other cathedral organs later in the 20th C by Willis and others but by then were much more respectful of the different tonal heritages of these instruments.