Hot days don’t suit organs: they can put the pipework out of tune with a vengeance. So as the sun set on a scorcher, leaving candles to provide gentle light in Magdalen College Chapel (real candles, none of your electric fakes at this address), Daniel Hyde felt he ought to offer an apology at the start of his recital. “The last time I tried to crawl round and tune the organ,” he confessed, “there were more notes out of tune than when I started.”

Entitled Bach at Twilight, the recital was given as part of this year’s Magdalen College School Arts Festival — a nice touch, for the school has been providing the college with choristers since 1480, as Hyde enthusiastically reminded us. He began with the Prelude and Fugue in C major, BWV 547 — “Bach playing around and showing how clever he was,” as Hyde described it. His performance also demonstrated that the work is full of humour and wit, with its dancing Prelude and fleet-footed Fugue given bright, transparent tone colours, underpinned by sturdy pedal work.

Magdalen’s organ — built by N. P. Mander in 1986 — is comparatively small, so it’s particularly suited to Bach’s more intimate-scale music. The three contrasting movements of Sonata VI in G major, BWV 530, were tellingly registered, with the opening Vivace resembling a joyous dawn chorus, the central Adagio sounding more austere, and the final Allegro given a silvery flute quality reminiscent of the Silbermann organs played by Bach himself. Then it was on to three Chorale Preludes, BWV 641, 622, and 639 from Das Orgelbüchlein, all three of them expressing an awe of God. The recital was bookended by another Prelude and Fugue, this time in G major, BWV 541. Here the joyous major key was fully exploited.

This was a thoroughly fulfilling recital, with Daniel Hyde keeping any rogue out of tune pipes firmly under control.