Jane Parker-Smith, Royal Festival Hall, London

Wrestling with a recalcitrant organ

It's not often that an organ recital falls prey to mechanical failure, and the man from Harrison & Harrison, which built the Festival Hall's instrument, blamed the low levels of humidity when Jane Parker-Smith threw up her hands in dismay half-way through the second Saint-Saëns Fantaisie. (She had just embarked on a rather worthy fugal section, so, frankly, one didn't feel too bad about the rude interruption.)

Already, the swell division had given trouble in the recital's first half. Whether or not it had anything to do with the organ's need for restoration, I know not – the console was renovated and new coupler and piston systems installed in 2000, but there's still work to be done on the pipework.

After several minutes of tinkering, the recital was resumed with only the final item to go – a Passacaglia in D minor by the German organist-composer Wilhelm Middelschulte. Based on a falling chromatic theme and working in the chorale "Ein feste Burg", the whole thing was a curious reflection of a work we had heard earlier in the programme – Liszt's Variations on "Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen", composed 30 years earlier. Depending on your point of view, Middelschulte was too close for comfort, for, after Liszt's wonderful opportunities for colouring – his contest between massive force and plaintive, exposed solos – a journey along a similar route seem a bit otiose.

Parker-Smith obviously had sets of variations on recurring bass themes on the brain, for she began with Bach's famous violin Chaconne – arranged by the same Wilhelm Middelschulte. She hit a nice springy tempo, but I wondered quite what Middelschulte's game was in spicing up Bach's counterpoint intermittently. It certainly kept the organist busy with rather fussy manual-hopping.

York Bowen is best remembered – if at all – as a pianist and composer for his own instrument, but his Fantasia of 1949 was robustly sonorous and exploited the panoply of a romantic organ effectively. I wouldn't rush to hear the piece again, though, and it was soon erased from the memory by a catchy little Capriccio by John Ireland – who was an organist as well as a pianist. Saucy stuff.

Jane Parker-Smith, who made her Festival Hall debut as a stand-in for the legendary Fernando Germani in 1975, deserves a return match and will no doubt get it, if the beast hasn't altogether expired in the meantime. The final recital in the current series is given by Olivier Latry, organist of Notre Dame, Paris, on 9 April.