George Thalben-Ball

Sir George Thomas Thalben-Ball CBE (18 June 1896 – 18 January 1987) was an Australian organist and composer who spent almost all his life in England.

[1] He studied organ and piano at the Royal College of Music (RCM) in London, which he entered at the unusually young age of 14.

The level of his talent can be gleaned from the fact that he played the solo part in the first performance by an English-trained pianist of Rachmaninoff's famously difficult Piano Concerto No.

In 1923, he succeeded Walford Davies as organist and director of the Temple Church choir, a post he held for nearly 60 years.

Under his direction, the choir achieved in 1927 international fame with its recording of Mendelssohn's Hear My Prayer, featuring Ernest Lough as the treble soloist.

For many years he taught at the Royal College of Music, where his students included Meredith Davies, later to find fame as a conductor.

His style of performance (like that of his younger contemporary Virgil Fox in the US) was rooted in the 19th century, and made full use of every facility of the modern organ.