{TABLE} Fantasia and Fugue in G minor, BWV542 .......... Bach Psalm Prelude, Set 1 No. 2 ..................... Howells Fantasia and Toccata in D minor ................ Stanford Rubrics ........................................ Dan Locklair Danse macabre .................................. Saint-Saens/Lemare Prelude and Fugue on BACH ...................... Liszt {/TABLE} BIRMINGHAM'S city organist, Thomas Trotter, has become a regular visitor to Ireland. His visits have favoured the North, and last night's appearance, as part of the Dublin International Organ and Choral, Festival, was only his second in the city and his first at St Patrick's Cathedral.

His programme (played without an interval) ranged from Bach, to the contemporary American, Dan Locklair, by way of Howells, Stanford Saint Saens (Danse macabre in the Edwin H. Lemare arrangement) and Liszt.

Bach is not an easy undertaking on the St Patrick's instrument (even after its recent fine restoration), nor did Trotter make it seem so in his performance of the great Fantasia and Fugue in G minor. The sweetly innocent meanderings of one of Howells's Psalm Preludes were worked to greater advantage and Stanford's formulaically stirring Fantasia and Toccata in D minor was as honourably played as it was respectably composed.

There's not much to be said about the risibly characterised mood painting of Locklair's Rubrics save that, apart from the unerring grasp of what you might call organ potential, this five movement suite works at the level of inferior background music.

There's nothing inferior about Saint Saens's Danse macabre, in which Trotter mastered with evident relish a whole range of orchestra into organ challenges. This proved to be the highlight of the evening, as the performer's enthusiastic freedom in Liszt's Prelude and Fugue on BACH yielded spur of the moment excitement rather than the sense of controlled accumulation an which grants to this music point and substance than was achieved on this occasion.