by John Connell (Director of Music, City of Johannesburg)
Relayed from St. Margaret's, Westminster

John Connell, one of the British musicians on whom South Africa has laid compelling hands, organist of the Town Hall, Johannesburg, for a good many years, is visiting the home country for the second time, in the course of an autumn tour which has taken him as far afield as the United States. On how many organs he has played in the course of such an extended journey it would be rash to guess. But one thing can be confidently said, that no two of them are alike. That is one of the handicaps under which an organist labours, one with which his colleagues of lesser instruments cannot fully sympathize. They, even the pianist, if he is wealthy enough, or backed by a kindly enough firm of pianoforte makers, may take their own accustomed instruments with them, and find them change only as climate and the capricious temper from which musical instruments suffer, make them do. But the organist has to adapt himself, and often with the scantiest opportunities for doing that, to much more serious differences, wherever he goes, in the actual lay-out and arrangement of his complicated instrument: never will he find stops and other contrivances ready to his hand in quite the same way as they were on the organ on which he last played, nor do any two instruments answer his fingers and his feet with a like responsiveness. That organists overcome that big handicap with such apparent ease is an achievement which the players of humbler instruments salute wholeheartedly - when they remember it.