SOME call it York's most significant historic organ, even including the leviathan in the Minster. It is certainly one of the city's oldest. The organ in St George's, George Street, Walmgate, is up and running again, after a huge reordering and restoration.

Installed in 1821 by the London organ-builder James Davis in the old St Wilfrid's Chapel in Little Blake Street (now Duncombe Place), it was transferred to St George's in 1862. Various Victorian excrescences have now been removed, a new oboe stop and pedal board added, and the pipe-work restored to its former Georgian glory and tone.

Terence Charlston, best known as harpsichordist of London Baroque, reopened it last night, with intermittent accompaniment from the period instruments of the Georgian Ensemble, a string quartet. The programme was appropriately centred on English music of the Georgian period.

Typical were a cutely decorated Andante Affetuoso by John Stanley, part of an organ concerto and very much in the galant style, and a sparkling solo fugue by James Nares, erstwhile Minster organist (1735-56), taken at cracking pace.

Two Epistle Sonatas by Mozart, notably the titillating cadenza of K.336 in C, showed the organ at its most agile. Humidity may have affected the instrumental tuning in a Charles Wesley concerto, newly edited.

Much more successful was a organ concerto in D minor by Bach, three lively movements from cantatas. The organ shone throughout, bright and colourful. Francis Jackson is to play it in recital in September.

Updated: 10:43 Friday, June 24, 2005