McCorkle Performing At Today’s Music At Noon

The Music at Noon concert series at Lexington Presbyterian Church continues today, Wednesday, Dec. 13, with an organ recital by William McCorkle at noon in the Lexington Presbyterian sanctuary.

Today’s concert, displaying the church’s C. B. Fisk pipe organ, op 128 (2007), will feature compositions, based on Advent and Christmas melodies, by two American organists/composers.

Margaret Vardell Sandresky, born in 1921, remains active as one of organ music’s most prolific composers. McCorkle will perform Sandresky’s “Six Variations on ‘Fröhlich soll mein Herze springen’” [“All my heart this night rejoices”] – to the 18th-century Moravian melody “Briesen.”

Rebecca Groom te Velde (born 1956), known worldwide as a brilliant organist and composer, is editor of a number of anthologies of hymn-based organ compositions. Today’s program will feature her works based on a number of familiar Christmas hymns: “People, Look East,” “Creator of the stars of night,” “God rest you merry, gentlemen,” “O Jesu sweet, O Jesu mild,” and “On this day earth shall ring.”

On Dec. 20, McCorkle will continue his yearly tradition of keyboard improvisations on Christmas tunes.