Ian Ball

Further to all the above, click HERE - scroll down til you see the CD 'Spiritual Movement No 1' and listen to the freebies. The Pipedreams programme cited above is well worth a listen too. BD is on around the 54 minute mark. It's incredible how a Goll Pedal 'cello/principal sounds like the Hammond pedal stops she uses for the string bass parts! You can see it's been a productive afternoon at work...

plus bicycle clips, for sure.

I'm afraid I hate it (though not as much as his Franck Pièce Héroïque). Great facility, but I really don't see the point (and I write as someone who generally loves Mahler, Wagner et al on the organ). I'd be more impressed if he could play it beautifully on the piano. Why he feels the need to perform in his underwear is another issue...

Not quite, but "Watch Pedal Power" - 2nd clip here includes a brief excerpt on a pipe organ, and very tasty it is too. I know what you mean re Hammonds, but there's enough variety (and sheer energy) in her playing and registration to sustain the interest of the dourest vegan Robertsbridge Codex fan, in my humble submission...

You flatter me! (Never been called that before.) I think she's fabulous. Sad to see the occasional sanctimonious comment below some of the YouTube clips - this lady certainly has technique.

Stunning. Simply stunning. I could watch and listen to her all night.

Go riding in the Cotswolds: all will become clear And that slow movement ...have you no soul?

Much much too quiet for what I had in mind, Sean. Even a flat-out, neo-Baroque chimney flute on the pedals would be drowned by the left hand strings (with sub and super couplers, naturally) at that low register. Remember Cochereau... ? You need that full, crescendo-ing, cantabile 'Flûtes' colour for meltingly beautiful solos And you certainly wouldn't want more than one pitch. Sadly I haven't experimented at Exeter or Crediton, and I appreciate AH Woods are laws unto themselves, hence my caveats. Perhaps unsteady wind can be an added but fixable problem? But I wouldn't discard them on any organ, merely augment with principals if necessary. All best, Ian

If I might put in a wee word in defence of 8 and 4 ft Open Woods: a good one makes a lovely pedal solo, in part of the range where the biggest manual flute might not have much power. I'm thinking chiefly of use in improvisations (e.g. for canons: left hand on shimmering strings; right hand on all the 8' flutes coupled together, in dialogue with the pedal 8' or 4' Wood - yummy ). A 16, 8, 4 chorus of Woods, if well voiced, are great underpinning robust hymn singing, and selected Wagner, Hollins, Lemare, Willan et al. And, of course, an 8' Wood can do a good job in French classical music, assuming, that is, that you can find anything else even vaguely resembling a Cromhorne and/or Cornet But I agree, badly voiced hooting honkers have little musical value. But we digress from Reger Fun Facts...

Ah, but then I'd have to play down two octaves for an 8' harmonic flute solo! It's bad enough one can't couple the flute at 8' pitch to the clarabella, Notre-Dame style

Of course, apart from the assumption that 'mud' is the opposite of perfect clarity. Organs by Sauer, Skinner, JW Walker and Harrison are still sometimes decried as sounding 'muddy' by a certain generation of organists. To my ears, the best of these instruments have perfect clarity, but also overwhelm and move the listener. They may sound dark, but you can still hear what's going on. However, I certainly believe that some composers deliberately use counterpoint to create layers of colour and effect. It is simply impossible to achieve perfect clarity of all the parts in a work like Spem in Alium, Hymnus Paradisi or Turangalîla-Symphonie, nor is it necessarily desirable. In the busiest baroque music, the combined effect of the counterpoint is greater than the sum of the parts - a trite, obvious point I know, but often overlooked. Thankfully, the pendulum has swung well and truly back to a sensible middle, and we are hearing 'muddy' Bach, with melanges of middle-German 8 foot foundations; reeds in fugues (for the sake of clarity ); and Reger played on instruments with more than one 8' prinzipal supporting the chorus!

Absolutely! Was 'clarity' really uppermost in Bach's mind when he wrote the double choir/orch mvts in St Matthew Passion? Or his Fantasia "Komm, heiliger Geist"? One can play this game all night with the densest Monteverdi, Tallis, Palestrina, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Strauss, Reger, Messiaen, Vaughan Williams...and Howells!!! Sadly 'clarity' was the watchword of the teachers of many of the present generation's senior professionals...tho it seems to be more prevalent in the organ/choral world than in the orchestral. I'm not advocating fudging the dots, but precision is only the beginning... Shall we start a new thread? 'You can't see the detail in cathedral roof bosses. Does it lessen their artistic merit or affective impact?'

I take it you concur with the sentiment behind this? A bee in my bonnet I'm afraid. I have come to the conclusion that innocuous little word, 'clarity', has done more damage to our instrument and the proper interpretation of centuries of music than anything else.

My faves include many of the above, particularly the Whitlock, Willan, Howells pieces and Jackson T, C & F (pure Shostakovich 5. Fantastic). As much as I love the Bairstow, it is 2nd division compared with the Elgar which in my view IS real organ music (see my earlier post). Some of what follows is a tad left-field, but I love them all: Bull - Ut re mi fa so la ti doh a deer Purcell - ye Voluntariee for Ye Duble Orgaine Wesley - Choral Song & Fugue (such lyricism combined with that astonishingly powerful fugue) Stanford - Fantasia & Toccata in D minor nothing by Parry (long-winded and dull - don't try to convince me otherwise, I've tried very hard to like the Wanderer, but in vain) Lemare - 1st Symphony Leighton - Martyrs (a duet of incredible sustained intensity); Et resurrexit (that last page...wow!) Howells - Sonata (grossly underrated thanks to the type of anally retentive, clarity-obsessed critic who called Howells "too clever" and can't get to grips with Missa Sabrinensis ) Pott - Introduction, Toccata & Fugue Bednall - Adagio Will someone please commission a major organ work from John Pickard? I see James MacMillan's written quite a few works for the instrument but alas I haven't explored them yet.

If I may jump back to the Elgar debate, with apologies for the late entry: I have always regarded over-'orchestration' of this work on the organ as a big mistake. One of the most illuminating organ lessons I've ever had was an afternoon on the Sonata with Nicholas Kynaston (who is proud of being only 3 links away from Elgar: Edgar Cook --> Ralph Downes --> NK). He is convinced that it can be played perfectly well with the number of pistons found on the Wooster Hill, and employs some ingenious but simple registrational 'tricks' and thumbing downs (from the apostolic succession of teachers) to enable this. Thus, the momentum and tight construction of the work is maintained, without losing appropriate expression.

I'm really proud of mine: Great Open Diapason 8 Stopt Clarabella (in Sw) 8 Flute (harmonic) 4 Swell Viol da Gamba 8 Gemshorn (actually, a small Principal) 4 Hautboy 8 Pedal Bourdon 16 Sadly, it's currently in bits in a church gallery on Gloster, but sounded lovely when it was in one piece. I certainly wouldn't miss a 2' with all this colour. All I need now is time and space...

Naji - I just adore this brief improv on Salve Regina. It repays several visits. Quintessential recent Hakim - tuneful, jazzy, playful, even childlike at times - and a classic dominant preparation which he then overshoots à la Walton (albeit in the minor). Superb control of both instrument and that famously luminescent acoustic too.

Yes, Messe a deux choeurs et deux orgues Op. 36 (mens' chorus being originally the 200 seminarians attached to St-Sulpice!).

Hi. Does anyone know where I might borrow/hire copies of the Widor Mass for 2 choirs/organs? I've inherited a choral society in south west UK intent on doing it and they're having trouble sourcing vocal scores via libraries. Any leads gratefully received. Thanks Ian Ball

Quite astonishing!! Such variety of colour and dynamics. Incredible. A very moving performance too - he understands this piece better than some organists I could mention!

Just like the tribune at Notre-Dame de Paris then... or at Saint-Denis, where Pierre Pincemaille's most impressive skill is improvising (in characteristic white hot fashion) one handed whilst, with the other, retrieving a cigarette from the open packet under the stop jamb and lighting it from the dying remnants of the almost spent cigarette in his mouth. Seamless, and totally authentic!

As long as they're never louder than lieblich, to paraphrase the great Dennis Townhill.

Rather Wooden Thoughts, don't you think, Herr Gedeckt?

I was simply very proud. I know Snogs of Praise is a big turn off for most families (at least in my day you could guarantee music from one's own tradition at least 80% of the time), but in these days when our instrument gets minimal media exposure, I was proud to see it take centre stage. It was also good to hear some of the UK's finest and most infectious communicators reach a slightly wider audience. Having hero-worshipped Gordon Stewart and Malcolm Archer as a youngster (and later taught by/worked with both) it was great to sit and watch them (in the inspiring company of Wood, Parsons and Marsden Thomas) with my own keenly musical children. I agree about the toasters, however - what WAS that noise at the end of Jerusalem?? - and also hate that metallic digital echo the ill-disciplined youth of today's BBC insists on adding to perfectly nice acoustics, but in the words of Victoria Wood, Joe Public won't notice...

I was simply very proud. I know Snogs of Praise is a big turn off for most families (at least in my day you could guarantee music from one's own tradition at least 80% of the time), but in these days when our instrument gets minimal media exposure, I was proud to see it take centre stage. It was also good to hear some of the UK's finest and most infectious communicators reach a slightly wider audience. Having hero-worshipped Gordon Stewart and Malcolm Archer as a youngster (and later taught by/worked with both) it was great to sit and watch them (in the inspiring company of Wood, Parsons and Marsden Thomas) with my own keenly musical children. I agree about the toasters, however - what WAS that noise at the end of Jerusalem?? - and also hate that metallic digital echo the ill-disciplined youth of today's BBC insists on adding to perfectly nice acoustics, but in the words of Victoria Wood, Joe Public won't notice...