Bate acknowledges Mendelssohn as a passionate improviser whose personal style won him many friends during his ten visits to Britain; if more passion might occasionally be welcome in these performances, Bate's scholarly approach and fastidious playing are reason enough for Mendelssohn devotees to collect the complete set.

In Jennifer Bate's impressive discography of British organ music she has taken pains to match each individual piece with an appropriate organ. Technically speaking, Mendelssohn may not have been British, but his magnificent Sonatas and Preludes and Fugues were all composed for the British market, so it is entirely fitting that Bate pays the same attention to detail over his music as she does over the genuine, home-grown article.
In this series, which will eventually stretch to five discs, Bate has recorded all 68 pieces contained in a newly published edition of Mendelssohn's complete organ works. It goes without saying that her playing is hugely impressive and impeccably stylish, the virtuoso passagework delivered with almost flawless precision.
The surprise at finding, among the six English organs chosen for this repertoire, Wimborne Minster, with its neo-Baroque organ, is quickly assuaged by Bate's intelligent use of stops included in the 1867 rebuild. Appropriately this instrument is used for the more contrapuntal pieces. For the First Sonata she uses the more opulent-sounding Walker instrument of St Matthew's, Bayswater, while the sumptuous Hill organ of St Stephen's, Bournemouth (here relocated from Dorset to Hampshire, where it was located when the organ was built in 1898), is ideal in the first three of the Four Studies.
Beyond the First Sonata and the Prelude and Fugue, the only piece here to have established itself in the repertory is the lovely Andante andVariations which here, played with disarming fluidity on the organ of All Saints, Margaret Street, provides a real highlight on a disc which is infinitely more rewarding than an initial glance at the track-listing might imply.