Donations to support these concerts are particularly appreciated. If you would like to sponsor a concert please get in touch. Musicians need support!

Concerts at Hammerwood are very unique for three reasons:

• We have performers enthusiastic about performing to audiences enthusiastic to hear music rather than merely to be seen dressed up. Often performers want to try something out or prepare for a special event elsewhere so sometimes we arrange concerts at short notice . . . so please keep an eye open on this page or ask to be put on our mailing list.
• Our instruments are chosen for their musicality rather than their brand-name. Pianos designed to transport their notes to the 2000th member of the audience at the back of the concert hall have no place in chamber recitals. We maintain a harpsichord so that Bach can be performed on it rather than the piano - Bach hated the piano - an musicians are welcome to come to practice and try things out. There is also a delightful foot blown chamber organ which will be used this year and a very interesting 5 manual concert organ capable of covering repertoire from mediaeval to modern and in the English cathedral, North European, French romantic, Italian and French Baroque traditions. It provides an opportunity for the organist to be seen without the need for video and an acoustic comparable to the console position at St George's Windsor, enabling the audience to enjoy the detail of the music
• For the past 120 - 160 years or so, our enjoyment of keyboard music has been forced into the equivalent of watching black and white television, switching off the colour. This has resulted from an absolute standard of piano tuning so that all keys have become Mr Average. Each of the notes have been equally spaced. But this is neither musical nor interesting: music relies on both melody and harmony, harmony resulting from the physical harmonics of sound, which "equal temperament" ignores and abuses, fitting notes in so that they sound near but not relating to the harmonic scale. In the systems of tuning we use at Hammerwood, commonly in use by all composers up to at least the death of Chopin in 1849 and beyond, different keys accord with the harmonic scale to differing degrees providing interesting tone colours and resonances.

This is not ivory tower stuff - the classical music world has stuffily lagged behind what modern guitarists have discovered and are going back to . . .

Be updated if you would like . . .

There are two pipe organs at Hammerwood which are played regularly and all organists are welcome to play during public opening! In the Elgin Room there is a house organ which was made by Hunter in the 1890s and subsequently given to the Royal School of Church Music which we purchased and rebuilt here in 1994. Although small (9ft cube with 11 ranks of pipes) it will play anything - from Handel to Widor. The tremulant transforms it into quite a cinema style if one wants it.

The other pipe organ is in the library and is a chamber organ in 18th century style made by Sprague in 1854. It has four ranks of pipes, is without a pedal board and is tuned to an unequal temperament most suitable for the works of John Stanley and many other 18th century composers.

There is also a 1937 Hammond E electric organ (one of the very first) in the Elgin Room which plays through two ex-Compton speakers but this pales and sounds dull and disappointing next to the pipe organ. It formerly served the Founder's Chapel of Charterhouse School.

We are most grateful to both Matthew Copley of Organ Design, Surbiton and Paul Rayner Brown of Wood Brown Organ Builders, Burgess Hill, for their generous assistance with the pipe organs.

Former specification of 1993 Makin organ at Hammerwood Park, formerly at LondonDerry Cathedral

Specification of enlarged 5 manual organ at Hammerwood Park, formerly at LondonDerry Cathedral

Not many organs in England are capable of this . . . :

Specification of 1893 Hunter organ at Hammerwood Park, formerly at Addington Palace, RSCM

We have just been given a pianola. It's a basic one and it needs some repair to pneumatic motors but the piano is good and great fun . . .