I think something like 95 per cent of the music performed at classical concerts was written by dead guys, so anniversaries of deaths are an easy excuse to construct a concert programme. There’s also a measure of safety in this — who would argue against honouring the dead? So at Wednesday’s McGill Summer Organ Academy concert, the 350th and 50th anniversaries of the deaths of Heinrich Scheidemann and Paul Hindemith were commemorated through the lovely playing of organist William Porter at the
Church of the Immaculate Conception.