Simon Preston

Background

Simon John Preston was born on 4 August 1938 in Bournemouth, Dorset, to John Preston, an architectural draughtsman, and Doreen Lane. His early musical life began when his uncle, the organist at the family’s church, inspired him. After hearing a recording by George Thalben-Ball, he started playing the organ at age five. He attended Canford School in Wimborne and sang as a treble chorister at King’s College, Cambridge.

There, he asked music director Boris Ord for organ lessons but was directed to Hugh McLean instead. He later trained under Caleb Henry Trevor at the Royal Academy of Music, then returned to King’s College as an organ scholar under David Willcocks. He first gained notice accompanying the college choir during the Nine Lessons and Carols service on Christmas Eve 1958. He married Elizabeth Hays in 2012.

In his later years, Preston had Alzheimer’s disease. Described as “one of the most important English church musicians of his generation,” he died on 13 May 2022 at a care home in Littlemore, Oxfordshire, at age 83.

Career and legacy

Preston was sub-organist of Westminster Abbey from 1962 to 1967 and, after a brief period covering for Peter Hurford at St Albans Cathedral in 1968, became organist of Christ Church, Oxford, in 1970, where he also lectured. In 1981 he returned to Westminster Abbey, serving as Organist and Master of the Choristers until 1987. During that time he was responsible for the music at the wedding of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson in 1986.

Preston left Westminster Abbey in 1987 to pursue a career as an international concert organist. He was artistic director of the Calgary International Organ Festival from 1990 to 2002, patron of the University of Buckingham, chair of the Herbert Howells Society and vice-president of both the Organ Club and the Organists' Benevolent League. He also served as a member of the Arts Council music panel and the music committee of the BBC.

Compositions and recordings

From the 1960s onwards, Preston composed a number of works for the organ, the best-known of which is probably his Alleluyas, written in 1965 in the style of Olivier Messiaen. Recordings of his organ works originally made in the 1960s on the Argo label were re-issued by Eloquence in November 2017. In 1965, for the Edington Music Festival, he commissioned a setting of verses 73–104 of Psalm 119, and in 1966 he composed a set of five anthems. The following year he wrote a Missa Brevis (short mass service) for the Edington Music Festival, and in 1968 he wrote a Magnificat and a Nunc Dimittis for the same festival.

Preston made over 100 recordings, beginning in the early 1960s. His recordings include the complete organ works of Johann Sebastian Bach and the Organ Symphony (Symphony No. 3) by Camille Saint-Saëns, with James Levine conducting the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, both for Deutsche Grammophon. He recorded George Frideric Handel's complete organ concertos twice: with Yehudi Menuhin conducting the Bath Festival Orchestra and later on period instruments with Trevor Pinnock directing The English Concert.

In 2010, he played the organ for the recording of Hector Berlioz's Te Deum, Op. 22, with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, conducted by Susanna Mälkki. He contributed music to the 1975 film Rollerball and the 1984 film Amadeus. He also played the harpsichord, particularly in the early stages of his career, including on a recording of the Concert champêtre by Francis Poulenc.