*** Michael Dudman’s Long-Lost Recordings Return: A Timeless Gift to Organ Music Lovers ***

In a moving tribute to one of Australia’s most distinguished concert organists, two new volumes of Organ Music with Michael Dudman are being released—featuring recordings not heard in over 35 years. Captured at the Newcastle Conservatorium Concert Hall in the late 1980s and early 1990s, these performances showcase Dudman’s expressive mastery and deep connection to the organ repertoire.

The recordings, long preserved but never publicly available, were made during Dudman’s tenure as Principal of the Newcastle Conservatorium, where he oversaw the development of its acclaimed performance complex and helped shape the region’s musical identity. The hall’s Knud Smenge pipe organ, built to Dudman’s specifications, provides the majestic backdrop for these newly restored tracks.

Michael Dudman (1938–1994) was a towering figure in Australian classical music, known for his appointments at Ely Cathedral and Grimsby Parish Church in the UK, and later for his transformative leadership at the Newcastle Conservatorium. His sudden passing in 1994 left a void in the world of organ music—but these recordings offer a rare and intimate glimpse into his artistry.

Organ Music with Michael Dudman – Volumes I & II are now available for streaming and download on Bandcamp & iTunes, with select tracks also featured on SoundCloud. The release coincides with the 31st anniversary of Dudman’s passing, honouring his legacy and inviting a new generation to discover the grandeur of the King of Instruments.

Passacaglia in D minor - Dietrich Buxtehude

Tuba tune in D major - C.S. Lang

Organs of Western Australia - Part 1

Recorded 1975.

Featuring works by 





Chorale Prelude = "Sleepers Wake" - J.S. Bach - Christ Church Grammar School Chapel

Music for Organ
at Newcastle Conservatorium

Recorded August 1988
Recording Engineer - Ross Sheard
c.1988 Chartreuse Records
c.2015 The Michael Dudman Collection


Concerto in D, op9. No 12 - Charles Avison

Concert Variations - The Star Spangled Banner, op4 - John Knowles Payne

The Toccata and Fugue in D Minor is Bach's most celebrated organ piece. It has achieved immense popularity not only in its original form but in transcriptions for piano and for orchestra.

A vivid and stormy toccata is followed by a flowing fugue whose subject is derived from the opening toccata figure. The fugue is remarkable for its dramatic and emotional growth: after an imposing interrupted cadence, the viruoso writing of the toccata is resumed leading to a dramatic conclusion.

(Taken from the CD - "Michael Dudman plays works by Bach, Wills, Vierne & others)
Chartreuse Records 1994

01 Toccata

Uniting Church - Jersey Road, Woollahra.
Recorded 25 March, I983

From SOJ Winter 2006:

Dr Kelvin Hastie writes:

The work of Yorkshire firm, Forster & Andrews, of Hull, is covered in detail in Graeme Rushworth's Historic Organs of New South Wales. [1] Rushworth describes the eight examples of this firm's work that were exported to New South Wales between 1876 and 1887, noting the loss through rebuilding and subsequent removal of the old University of Sydney organ of 1881 and the destruction by fire in 1961 of the 1883 instrument in the former Redfern Congregational Church. Less than a year after Rushworth's volume was published, the first Forster & Andrews organ exported to Australia - that of the Jersey Road Uniting Church Woollahra, dating from 1876 - was reduced to ash and lumps of metal in an arson attack on 27 January 1989.

The Jersey Road organ was built at a cost of £500 and opened on 1 October 1877, its design being based “on the advice of E.J. Hopkins”, of the Temple Church, London. [2] The instrument was erected in the church by Charles J. Jackson, who also made the wooden pipes for the Pedal Violon 16' and Great Bourdon 16', as well as the lower sections of the case. [3] The only known recording of the organ was made by Michael Dudman for the ABC-FM series “Historic Organs of Sydney” and since re-released in CD format under the Walsingham label.

On 30 September 1980, John Stiller, Research Officer of the Organ Historical Trust of Australia, carried out a standard documentation of the organ, noting that the only changes made to the organ were the fitting of tuning slides to open metal pipes of the Great, the replacement of the hitch-down swell pedal by a balanced pedal and the removal of the hand-blowing apparatus. [4] He noted the following characteristics of the instrument:

1.	The original sound of the organ has been retained, having a rather dark and restrained quality which seems to be a feature of many organs built by Forster & Andrews.

2.	All of the original pipework is still present, and the Great Stopped Diapason 8 ft. is unusual for Forster & Andrews [partially constructed of stopped metal] and may well be unique in their Australian instruments.

3.	The open metal pipework on the Swell retains its cone tuning.

4.	The case design is very typical of Forster & Andrews, containing no casework above impost level. The original ornate decorations on the display pipes have been preserved.

5.	The original console is still present, which includes the unusual feature of sloping stop jambs. Original console fittings still present include stopknobs, stop labels, keyboards, keyboard cheeks, pedalboard and composition pedals.

6.	The original mechanical key, stop and combination actions have been preserved, and the Great key action contains the unusual feature of a double-sided roller board. [5] 

The specification of the organ was:


GREAT
Bourdon 
Open Diapason
Stopped Diapason
Dulciana 
Principal 
Flute 
Twelfth 
Fifteenth 

SWELL
Open Diapason
Flute d'Amour
Principal 
Oboe 
Tremulant 

PEDALS
Violon 
Bourdon 

COUPLERS
Swell to Great
Great to Pedals
Swell to Pedals

16 ft. Tone
8 ft.
8 ft.
8 ft.
4 ft.
4 ft.
2-2/3 ft.
2 ft.


8 ft.
8 ft.
4 ft.
8 ft.



16 ft.
16 ft.






56 pipes
56 “
56 “
56 “
56 “
56 “
56 “
56 “


56 “
56 “
56 “
56 “
[knob under keydesk]


30 “
30 “





Total number of pipes = 732
Pitch a1 = 441.6 Hz at 23 degrees


Following the fire, the Uniting Church, which owned several other buildings in close proximity, thereby rendering re-occupation at Jersey Road unviable, decided to sell the site and the shell of the building was then restored and converted to a suite of upmarket apartments by a property developer.



[1] Graeme D. Rushworth, Historic Organs of New South Wales: the instruments, their makers and players 1791-1940 (Sydney: Hale & Iremonger, 1988), 239-51.

[2] The organ is described in The New South Wales' Independent, 15 March 1877, page 42.

[3] Rushworth, page 242.

[4] John Stiller, “Uniting Church Jersey Road Woollahra NSW - Documentation of Pipe Organ built by Forster & Andrews 1876”. Organ Historical Trust of Australia, 30 September 1980.

[5] Ibid.

Nazard from Suite Francaise - Jean Langlais

recorded 13 November 1984
St Andrews Congregational church, Balmain. Sydney

St Andrews church, one of the oldest in the Congregational Fellowship was dedicated on 16 August 1855. Located in what is known as the Balmain 'village', at the intersection of the Darling Street & Curtis Road, the church has been the focal point for a busy Saturday market in recent years. Rich in colour with stanned glass, Victorian furniture and paintings depicting Scriptural themes, its interior is enhanced considerably by the presence of a superbly decordated J.W. Walker organ, located on a platform at the front of the church.
Walkers built the organ in 1867 for the St John's Anglican church in Darlignhurst and a few of the vacant slides were later filled with ranks supplied by C.J Jackson. The organ was removed to Balmain when the Darklinghurst congregation ordered a much larger instrument from Hill & Son in 1885.

The instrument was recorded prior to restoration work completed by Pilchard and Garside in 1993. At the time of the restoration an opporunity was taken to remove the unoriginal Swell Bourdon 16ft, and to provide the ranks specified in the original Walker scheme.

Fantasia in G minor - Pachelbel

The Great Organ at Methuen - by Michael Dudman

After almost 30 years recordings by Australian Concert Organist Michael Dudman at Methuen Memorial Music Hall to be released. 
​An unexpected discovery has made the possibility of releasing rediscovered work by legendary Australian Concert Organist Michael Dudman. Dudman passed away 25-years ago but this work has been curated and restored, becoming available for CD & download release on August 7th, 2019.  

It is hard to put into words the positive impact one of Australia's foremost concert organists Michael Dudman (1938-1994) has had both in Australia and abroad as both a performer and a teacher. 2004 saw the discovery of an entire set of unreleased master tapes of work Dudman performed for a Newcastle based radio station. After work was done to restore and remaster the original tapes, “The Great Organ at Methuen - played by Michael Dudman”, a recording of a magnificent performance from Dudman at Methuen Music Hall in Massachusetts, will be available on CD and as a digital download on August 7th, 2019 across all major music platforms, 25-years after Dudman's passing.  

“We are very excited about this release and others in the near future,” commented a spokesperson from MichaelDudman.com. “To see this not lost forever is a true blessing.”

release date - August 7th (Download)/  August 13 (CD) 2019 

Recorded 3rd September 1990 
Recording Engineer - Scott Kent 
Transfer engineer - Wheldon Thornley 
Mastering engineer - Johnathan Fitzgerald 

c.1990 / 2019 Michael Dudman / MPD Records - All rights reserved. © & ⓅThe Michael Dudman Estate 2019. All rights of the produced and of the owner of the work reproduced reserved. Unauthorised copying, hiring, lending, public performance and broadcasting of this recording prohibited. www.michaeldudman.com

The Great Organ at Methuen

Suite Gothique - Leon Boellmann

Michael Dudman’s abiding interest in, and love of the King if Instruments developed at quite an early age, so that by the time he came to be appointed organist and choirmaster (at the prodigious age of thirteen at St Oswald’s Anglican Church, Haberfield, he already had an intimate acquaintance with many of the instruments recorded there. An-other for example, is also the first that Michael Dudman encountered, according to his brother, Victor, who recalls “having the clearest memory of Mike and me standing on each side of the console, watching the keys being pulled down by the couplers, and Mike barely coming up to the stop handles.”

​Michael Dudman’s absorption with the organ and his working acquaintance with many of its manifestations developed in the company of his brother, and of a father who was fond on taking them to, “church crawls on a Sunday afternoons.”

​At age fifteen Michael Dudman was selected to play the Sydney Town Hall organ at a Combined High Schools’ concert. Also, at about that time, he gave a lunchtime recital on the 1910 Hill organ at the then Pitt Street Congregational Church, and recorded the first “Young Australia” broadcast for the A.B.C. In his final year of high school he topped the State in Music and, having then gained his Leaving Certificate, the all but self-taught eighteen year old began formal lessons in organ playing with Norman Johnston at the Sydney Conservatorium. He subsequently graduate with the Performer’s and Teacher’s Diplomas in 1959 and with the prize for the most distinguished student of the year.

​Aided by the Award of a Vasanta Scholarship, Michael Dudman then undertook post-graduate study in Paris with Norman Johnston’s teacher, André Marchal. This was, how-ever cruelly cut short because of the Algerian crisis. Forces to leave Paris, he went to Eng-land where, not very long after his arrival, he was appointed Assistant Organist at Ely Cathedral. He served at Ely for four years and then spent four years at Grimsby Parish Church before returning to Australia in 1968 armed with much experience in practical music making and with a fellowship of the Royal College of Organists.

 The year following his return saw Michael Dudman’s appointment as Organist and Master of the Choristers at Newcastle’s Christ church Cathedral, and as lecturer at the city’s fledgling Conservatorium. He served the cathedral with distinction for some ten years. With the exception of a few years spent in Perth, where he was organist at St George’s cathedral and a lecturer at the Perth’s Teachers College, Michael Dudman spent the remaining twenty-five years of his life in Newcastle. Thus it was that his name became identified with the music of the city the service of which he zealously devoted almost half of his all too short life.

​This zeal, and his reputation and achievements came to be recognized in various ways: his being made a member of the Order of Australia for services to music, for example, and his three-month’s tenure as first Artist-In-Residence at the Sydney Opera House. Michael Dudman became Principal of the Newcastle Conservatorium in 1980 and it expanded and progressed enormously under his direction. In 1989 he based there an annual Keyboard Festival of which he was artistic director. That same year his title changed to being that of Dean and Director when the Conservatorium became the Faculty of Music for the University of Newcastle: eventually he was to become Professor upon being given a personal chair in Music.

​The combination of onerous responsibility, unrelenting stress in his academic life, family life and the will to maintain his technique through daily practice as well as his active concert and recital career ultimately proved fatal. He died most unexpectedly of a heart attack on the 6th August 1994 aged fifty-five.

01 Toccata

Michael Dudman

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