With the death on May 9th of Una Russell, Ireland has lost one of its finest organists and teachers of the instrument. Born, reared and educated to secondary school level in Dundalk, where her father was a well-known solicitor, Una’s love of and interest in the organ was first kindled by hearing the great Henry Willis instrument of the town’s main church, St Patrick’s, being put through its paces on a weekly basis by the legendary Flemish-born organist of the church, the highly accomplished Michael Van Dessel.
On completing school she surprised if not shocked her family by announcing that she wished to pursue studies in music rather than in one of the more predictable fields of law, business or arts. She moved to UCD to study music, where she was a close contemporary of pianist John O’Conor, while studying organ at Dublin’s College of Music (now DIT Conservatory of Music and Drama) with William Sydney Greig, the college’s long-term organ teacher. Una responded well to Greig’s meticulous if conservative teaching style.
On graduation, like a number of Irish organists before her, she moved to Belgium, a fons et origo of European organ culture, for further study at Antwerp's Royal Flemish Conservatoire, under the institution's organ professor, Stanislas Deriemaeker, who was also organist of the city's historic cathedral.
Una drank deeply from the well of the Low Countries' centuries-old instrumental heritage and pedagogical methodology, and in Deriemaeker, she found not only a warm and sympathetic teacher, but a man of profound culture and highest technical accomplishment. Una thrived under his instruction and enjoyed not only his and his family's warm friendship, but also that of the international class of students he had gathered about him. She emerged with the Conservatoire's Premier Prix avec grande distinction, and returned to Ireland, initially to Dundalk where she taught in the St Louis Secondary School, while simultaneously honing her scholarly skills with a master's in musicology at Queen's University, Belfast.
When an opportunity arose, she returned in 1983 to Dublin to become a lecturer in organ and academic studies at the DIT, a position she loved and held for 31 years until her retirement on August 30th last at the age of 64. As a teacher, Una was dedicated and demanding, giving her all to her students, from whom she expected full reciprocation in work and commitment. And in fact her students became as devoted to her as she was to them.
As a player, Una was meticulous and fastidious, scrupulously critical of herself to the extent that she limited her public performances to occasional outings at home or abroad. Yet her performances were always well received by cognoscenti, and her repertoire fused a fascinating combination of the canonic with the historically forgotten and obscure, and the compositionally new, as she saw the organ as a living instrument capable of making musically relevant statements today as it did 600 years ago.
Una Russell was the most loyal of friends. While naturally modest and self-effacing, she was a woman who held strongly to her principles, and was a doughty opponent if crossed on one of them. She was the best of company, a most generous host, and a lively and stimulating conversationalist. Her strength of character was fully tested over the past number of years as she combated the onslaught of cancer, and did so with exemplary courage, fortitude and humour. Her death in May came as a shock to her family, friends and colleagues across the globe. May she rest in peace and rise in glory.