AJJ
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Posts posted by AJJ
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Just spotted myself and wife! Interestingly, she (a musician herself who has had to put up with organs and organists for many years) usually takes no prisoners so to speak where organs recitals are concerned but was mightily impressed at this event. Not only did the player come in for great praise but so did the instrument. Whatever we anoracks think, the instrument seems to have impressed at least one muscal member of the public.
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For a huge selection of earlier music for manuals you should head straight for Fitzjohn Music where David Patrick has edited and publishes what must surely be the largest spread found anywhere currently. Reasonably priced, nice to look at and well edited.
https://www.impulse-music.co.uk/fitzjohnmusic/
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There was apparently a presentation to Organists’ Assocations recently by Robert Sharpe on what is likely to be done to the organ. Can anyone report back please?
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Ok, here we go....
The Quire Organ has some lovely noises - relaxed reed and principal choruses, endless variety of blending and characterful flutes, pleasing strings and celestes, nice small solo reeds and a decent full plenum with small 32’ reed and pedal bass. Bach came over very well and the general open toe voicing of much of the fluework actually sounded a bit like the former Walker/Downes instrument. There are birdsongs and bagpipes but these do not detract and I can imagin that it will accompany the monastic choir or whatever else is put before it admirably and with endless variety. This section happily fills the building with sound and reacts nicely to the acoustic - full of audience when we heard it and empty when we popped back the next morning.
The ‘west’ organ is very loud when used flat out and although supposedly designed to sound French doesn’t sound much like any C-Cs I have heard. There are some nice sounds back there but the big solo reeds sound to me at least more like English Tubas than anything at N-D in Paris. Some grand effects can be experienced using both sections together but I would imagine caution is needed as with everything ‘on’ there is a huge sound and clarity can suffer. Full organ can be heard from the restaurant across the green!
The mobile Quire console is quite full of electronics which all worked well as did the action with no sense of time lag etc. The visible woodwork is of a high standard and blends in with the general feel of the Abbey and the visible pipes above the stalls sparkle away nicely! I could quite happily live with this instrument week in, week out but would possibly feel just a touch of guilty pleasure in that it is not mechanical, has masses of wizzardry, can be extremely powerfull and has a stoplist that looks at least like something I might have devised as a youth!
Martin Baker’s recital was a triumph of programming to show off the organ and yet give us all some decent organ music. His improvisation at the end was virtuosic and quite amazing but not flashy or showing off for the sake of it. I had forgotten what a superbly musical player he is! There were two well deserved standing ovations and....he plays in socks as do I!
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Fantastic recital tonight by Martin Baker and a model of really effective programming with virtuoso but un-showy playing. By and large the organ aquitted itself well, the Quire section especially with loads of clear choruses and lovely quiet voices. The West end section is very loud, not especially French sounding and somewhere up there is something that sounds like a H&H Tuba from about 1910!
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The newer edition looks as if the registration advice comes from the Alain organ now at Neufchâtel. No time to peruse further but I have a recent article on this organ and its restoration that might add light to the subject. It is too large to attach here but please pm with an email address and I can send!
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They use phones at Ely too.
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On my little 1867 one manual Vowles I asked the organ builder to tune the Dulciana as a celeste. It beats with either the string or flute and I do not miss it as the string with box closed is plenty quiet enough for my needs. It also is not needed to acompany anything else. The added dimension of awe and wonder added by this little tweak is much appreciated and if needs be it can always be tuned back. When the whole tuning is a bit wayward on a cold day the organ sounds like one of those little instruments found at the altar end of a big French church. Marvellous for Franck’s L’Organiste or the Langlais 24 pieces.
http://www.npor.org.uk/NPORView.html?RI=N12535
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St Mary’s in Dorchester gained the similar sized and vintage Collins from the chapel down the road some years ago and it looks and sounds grand there. To install the TS organ at Orford would be daring but would provide a completely new dimension to the music of the church and indeed the area. Let’s hope things can be more positive if they appeal.
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A large number of us who were brought up on it (so to speak) in its original home will be excited to see and hear it back in action again. It will be interesting to hear it in a new acoustic, the Turner Sims Hall being fairly unforgiving. When the smilar sized Collins organ was moved from an acoustically dead space into the larger and decidedly more resonant St Mary’s Church in Dorchester I seem to remember some revocing might possibly have been done to fit the new home.
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Thanks
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I am trying without success to locate a copy of the above piece, apparently published at some point in the 1990s by Fentone but possibly now out of print. If anyone here posesses a copy or could point me in the right direction I would be very grateful.
Thanks
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3 hours ago, Jonathan Lane said:
....and frequently a 17:19:22 mixture can be used in the treble as a passable solo Sesquialtera. There are two of these at Canterbury. Salisbury is similarly endowed with a single Tierce and Lincoln has a Tierce with quint mixtures only. A recent Messaien CD from Lincoln shows Colin Walsh not phased by this.
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Sadly, Professor Peter Evans whose brainchild the TS organ was died early on January 1st.
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Very nice - one does not hear the Hindemith Sonatas much these days. Incidentally, much of this on here is being passed on to Professor Peter Evans who is following the news of the organ with interest. He is not currently in the best of health but is apparently much enthused that it will have a new home albeit not the one that it was orignally designed for.
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On 29/11/2017 at 23:48, Mark Harmer said:
Oh, this is fantastic - really enjoyed the recordings!
This is good news and if anyone wants to hear the slightly younger sibling of the TS organ then they can do so here now also in its second home. A nice touch also is that apparently Professor Peter Evans who was the driving force behind the TS organ and a biographer of Benjamin Britten listened to the premier of BB’s Curlew River from the porch at Orford beacause he was unable to get a seat!
http://www.npor.org.uk/NPORView.html?RI=D06607
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Oh yes - those didn’t seem to want to arrive last time I looked!
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Looking at the pictures it appears that what we are seeing is the floor being taken up due I seem to remember to water flooding the performing area from one of the streams that pass through the campus. It looks to me as if the organ had already gone when these were taken. I visited last year and was told that the instrument was dismantled and in storage awaitng a new home. I am not aware of which organ builing firm dismantled it nor details of the storage arrangements though possibly one or two on here might know more.
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5 hours ago, Mark Harmer said:
Lovely to read about this instrument in the Turner Sims concert hall, as it brought back memories of studying music there in the late 1970s.
I was there studying Music too from ‘75 to ‘78 so was most likely in your audience! We were extremely lucky to have this instrument to learn and play on and whatever one thinks about its decidedly ‘70s concept it was certainly a huge influence on my playing and a number of others also I would guess.
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Regarding the Pershore and Buckfast instruments I wonder whether the tonal designs stem from repertoir, liturgical or a sort of ‘wouldn’t it be nice if we had...’ considerations or maybe a mixture of these. The Persore details seem not to be generally available yet but I would be interested to know the rationale behind some of the Buckfast elements both tonal and in the general concept.
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I have a feeling that a previous incumbent at Pershore was a good friend of CC and that CC’s memorial service was actually held there. It will be interesting to see what Ruffatti come up with. Certainly, on paper at least their more recent instruments look decidedly tonally ‘eclectic’ and almost even random. Having heard their work only via recordings however, I do not feel qualified to fairly judge this aspect.
Off topic but does anyone know any more about the ‘what and why’ of their work on the Tickell at Keble College Oxford? I heard it not long after its creation and it sounded very fine then.
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Here it is.
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Somewhere or other Nigel Allcoat has written that one needs to judge the various effects on an Aubertin with ones’s ears rather than trying to apply expected stoplist conventions. My experiences at S. louis en L’Ile in Paris certainly supports this point.
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Guillou made some recordings of this organ when it was new - issued on CD by an American company. They showed the expected Guillou playing skills and some quite spectacular sounds and interpretations of true organ repertoire and transcriptions. I wondered then as to the suitability of the organ’s general compatability with orchestral sounds in the standard orchestral repertoire. The situation now seems very much to be a state of ‘what comes around goes around’ but all the same it wold be good if the organ could find a new home.
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Patrick Gowers
in Organ Music
Posted
Try contacting Richard or Barbara Priest here:
http://allegro.co.uk/
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