Jane Parker-smith
Virtuoso organist who lived fast and brought passion, glamour and insight to her assertive playing
JANE PARKER-SMITH, who has died aged 70, brought glamour to the organ console thanks to her extraordinary dexterity at the keyboard and her love of life in the fast lane; she swore like a trooper, drank like a fish, smoked like a chimney and played the organ like a woman possessed.
One reviewer described how she excelled in repertoire that was “big, gutsy, colourful, occasionally passionate, occasionally frothy, bristling with opportunities for virtuoso display but with a deeply hidden inner core of intellectual substance”. Flashy fingerwork went hand-in-hand with fast cars. She was an avid follower of Formula One racing and at one time drove a Lotus Esprit.
Like all organists she usually performed with her back to the audience. Yet even she cut an exotic figure, setting her audience’s hearts racing by sometimes wearing an outfit with a bare back. Her long hair was cut around her face in a 1920s flapper sort of way, while her shoes slipped on and off at almost the same tempo as the music.
Although Jane Parker-smith stood outside the mainstream of church organ music, for more than 30 years she played at
Christuskirche, the German church in Montpelier Place, Knightsbridge. Previously she had been organist of St James’ Church, Norlands, in Holland Park.
Her approach to church organs was bracing. While she thought pipes to be sweeter than electronic instruments, she was outspoken about the “dreary diet” that many audiences are fed on and she pulled out all the stops in her campaign for organists to get equal pay with pianists.
She persevered in a world that is both male- and church-dominated while winning admirers and detractors in equal measure. Whatever their opinion of her approach, those who heard her in performance were invariably left in awe of a brilliant musical talent.
“She is the Martha Argerich of the organ,” wrote Paul Driver in The Sunday Times in 2012, while five years earlier a Gramophone critic observed: “She finds hidden wonders buried in … relatively obscure scores and communicates them with breathtaking conviction. If ever there was an object lesson in musically assertive organ-playing, this is it.”
Jane Caroline Rebecca Smith was born in Northampton on May 20 1950. She was adopted at an early age and was educated at Barton Peveril Grammar School in Eastleigh, Hampshire. In her teens she added Parker to her name.
She had started playing the piano aged four and entered the Royal College of Music with the aim of becoming a concert pianist. A chance hearing of a performance on the college organ led to a change of direction and to studies with David Latham.
The college awarded her the Walford Davies Prize, which led to a high-profile recital at Westminster Cathedral, an appearance in the 1972 BBC Proms and the release of her first recording in 1973, on the Music for Pleasure label. Her other discs include a brilliant account from 1982 of Janácek’s Glagolitic Mass with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra conducted by Simon Rattle.
She won the 1974 National Organ Competition in Southport and took further studies in London with Nicolas Kynaston and in Paris with Jean Langlais, the famous blind organist, from whom she acquired an appreciation of the French romantic repertoire. The following year she made her debut at the Royal Festival Hall, standing in at short notice for an indisposed Fernando Germani.
Jane Parker-smith’s career took her to concert halls and cathedrals around the world, although like all organists she faced the challenge that no two instruments are alike. “Each organ has its own wonderful characteristics and some organs have some not-so wonderful qualities,” she said. “To me, the power, glory and majesty of the organ is a magnificent sound.”
She was in demand as a teacher and competition judge. Yet even in the most exotic location her day did not start until a copy of the Daily Telegraph cryptic crossword had been faxed over, to get her mind limbered up. In 2014 she was named as one of the “1,000 most influential Londoners” by the Evening Standard.
In 1996 Jane Parker-smith married John Gadney, a specialist in risk management; he died in 2012.
Jane Parker-smith, born May 20 1950, died June 24 2020