SomeChap

Thanks Peter for all your inside knowledge. Watching with interest (btw I'm not particularly an unashamed romantic, but I am also a fan of an unenclosed, flute-toned Unda Maris!)

Thanks for posting, some interesting changes there. My understanding - Great Primary is renamed Grand Organ (is this already in the Triforium or is it to be moved? Which bit of the triforium?) 32 Manual Flue thankfully expunged. 5 1/3 Quint also expunged - comments anyone? Harmonic Flute 8 transferred from Solo by the looks. Great Secondary essentially replaced with a beefier Screen Great, mostly new. Does the fact that both Gt Open Diapasons are new mean that we get lovely new tin case pipes? Is the new Screen Gt West or East-facing? New Gt and Sw chorus reeds and mixture work. (New Sw celestes too.) New-ish Choir organ combining old positiv and 'Swell Choir' with new chorus reeds and mixture. I daresay few will mourn the old Positif. Pedal new chorus work at 8 / 4 Solo seemingly new French Horn despite the fact that the Solo already had an Orchestral Horn and there's a Horn on the Swell! Blimey is there really room in the case for six independent 16' pedal flues? (plus borrowings!) I can't help but wonder if tonal egress might be better if a couple of them were ditched or moved to triforium? And just the one extended pedal reed rank - this must be the old Ophicleide re-badged? So there's a _lot_ of new manual chorus work; I suspect it could sound like a new organ! Looks like Harrisons are doing the same trick I understand they did at York with separate E/W Swell shutters - seems sensible. The choir is no longer enclosed, so that's one less swell enclosure to block sound egress. It looks like the new scheme is much more versatile from the East side of the screen (esp if the Screen Gt is East-facing)? I think I like the look of it! ------- ETA: Aha NPOR tells me that Primary Gt and Pedal Clobberwork are already in Triforium.

NPOR calls that the 'small organ' (I/5) Interesting that they're buying in a 2nd hand organ. The Bicknell article mentions that some material from their own organ was found to be historic:

The plans at Abergavenny were ambitious and could have been wonderful. Sadly Stephen Bicknell's website is now down, but it's on the wayback engine, and there is a description of the plans that were afoot, complete with gorgeous-looking drawing of a double case which would have stood across the south transept. I've never been to Abergavenny but judging from pictures it looks like a lovely buliding. One for the 'one day' list...

I tell you what, it sounds pretty gob-smacking in the hands of Timothy Macklin, the resident DoM, too. It seems Skrabl have well and truly arrived on the UK musical scene.

This is quite something. So good to see M Latry in full flight again and the Skrabl sounds absolutely tremendous here; I kept having to remind myself it wasn't NDP!

Thanks, I wasn't aware that the Adelaide Walker had displaced an already fine instrument. Based only on these photos, the new facade seems to be a visual improvement to my eyes, though the Hill case front is a splendid example of its type, and it's great that the Hill organ has found a new home and sympathetic restoration. BIOS have just awarded the 1885 Wordsworth & Maskell organ in St James Kinnersley in Herefordshire a Grade II* listing. The case was designed by the architect G F Bodley, who is buried at this church. I couldn't find a good photo to link directly in this post, but this one is worth clicking through to. There is a 'Bodley family resemblance' to other facades we've already seen up-thread, but I'm fairly certain it's not already been mentioned!

Incredibly helpful and knowledgeable replies, thanks both. I did give profile-based NR a try in Audacity but wasn't happy with the results, and couldn't seem to find a notch filter. I do recall some upper harmonics on the hum (a septieme I think). Serendipitously iZotope RX Elements (their budget offering) is currently on a crazy discount sale down from $130 to $20! It explicitly lists hum removal as a feature. I think I may be reaching for my credit card ... Thanks to all for indulging the topic-swerve!

Many thanks for the information and rational around the nesting bats. My photo url seems to have broken since yesterday; I'll try and fix it later.

Pleased that some are still enjoying this thread and it's a bit scary that David Drinkell's posts are only just a short scroll up from here. One which has just popped up on Simon Knott's wonderful flickr feed is Holy Trinity, Tattershall in Lincolnshire, an extraordinary late medieval building with lantern-like transepts and a proper stone pulpitum, on which sits an admittedly probably not very distinguished organ not originally built for this church (transplanted here in 1968), but which nevertheless looks very much the part: The plastic sheeting is less edifying ...

Great to hear the festival went well. I haven't been back to York for more than two years now; blooming pandemic. I was trying to persuade my parents to go and hear the Denman at an evensong or similar; they go to services in the Minster occasionally. Maybe I'll get to hear it again one day!

All good points and agreed about the modern attitude to customer service being better in some ways! To answer my own question, it looks like Prelude Records in Norwich is no more - it lasted until about 2017. A wonderful shop; I got a stash of Messiaen there once - including lots of Jennifer Bate at Beauvais and the Turangalila Symphony. Alas. This may be way off-topic but I've got an old, interesting and irreplaceable tape recording which suffers quite badly from 50hz hum, and I was wondering if Dr Pykett or other forumites might know a way to remove it? I've got it digitised in Audacity but had no luck there so far. It would be worth uploading to the Archive of Recorded Church Music if it is possible to improve it. (Happy to take offline if it disturbs this thread.)

Goodness, what a find! That is such a spectacular image, thanks and well done! Tell you what though, I don't fancy playing Stanford in A on it...

Cambridge had the incomparable Brian Jordan on Green St. I'm looking now at the second-hand copy of John Blow's keyboard works I bought there 20+ years ago, with Peter Holman's signature and a date of September 1976 on the front cover; I spent £4.50 on it. The late, eponymous Mr Jordan was a dapper, tweed-clad figure often to be seen around the town and in the congregation at Little St Mary's, the main Bells-and-Smells church. For a while there was also a pretty good CD shop on on Rose Crescent just off the Market Square; a friend who was a gap-year lay-clerk at St John's used to work in it. Was it called EMC or is memory playing tricks? It's long gone of course - now a shoe shop I think. I bought many more Philippe Herreweghe Bach CDs there than I could afford: all treasured now! And does Heffers still sell any music? HefferSound, their classical CD shop next door on Trinity St, is now a clothes shop. Last but certainly not least, there is Miller's on Sussex St (originally owned by the organ-builder Alfred Tubalcain Miller in the 19th century); I bought my piano there recently, but it has sold all sorts of musical goods in its long existence. Does Prelude Records still exist in Norwich? Market forces are not to be resisted, but these little havens of quiet beauty in our great towns, almost always staffed by incredibly knowledgeable people, are much missed. The future holds very little place for them, I fear.

Not loads to add to this, except to say that John's sounded stunning on the radio for Advent Sunday yesterday. The Anglican choral tradition is not dead yet, and it's in good hands there. The new developments are very exciting; to allow girls to access that level of inspiring and transporting musicianship is only going to bring even more good things. I cant wait to hear it!

I was hoping to see a 64' Bass Kornett V! 😈 Agreed with others though, it looks like it'll be epic!

ps. I'd recommend the videos on Nicholson's Youtube feed, firstly of James Atherton voicing a pipe in Denman style, and of him taking the just-about-completed organ from 0 to 60.

This is indeed great news; the Denman in St Michael-le-Belfry was my introduction to the pipe organ when I was aged about 4 (and of course its big brother across the road as well), back in the days when St Michael's still actually used it. Next time I'm in York I must try and see/hear it. It looks like Nicholsons have done a truly first-class job of bringing it back to life. And I am a little jealous of you growing up in Lastingham!

I keep meaning to get around to making a simplified version of the Cocker as a Tierce en Taille, with lots of lovely ornamentation and notes inégales ...

ps I should have said more about Selwyn: The chapel is biggish by Oxbridge standards (Victorian) but has rather dry acoustics; the choir is very good (is Sarah Macdonald still DoM?). More generally it's a lovely college in spacious leafy grounds on west road not far from the history faculty, far enough from town centre to have its own atmosphere but by no means isolated. I know nothing of the new organ as I said, but the Letourneau in Pembroke Oxford is excellent IMO, so it might be good? There was nothing as abstract as improvising on a Nazard at any of my numerous Oxbridge auditions. I didn't apply for Kings or Johns! Fingers crossed we'll be back to normal in the next year or so!

Since information seems slow to be added to this thread, I'll fill in what I can, even though you've picked a lot of organs I never saw when I was up. The Bishop at Christ's didn't have a fantastic reputation but looks OK on paper (no swell though!); I vaguely recall there are plans to replace it. The choir had a good reputation but I never heard them. I would agree with all previous comments about Emma. Pembroke is a marmite organ. I loved it on the basis of playing it occasionally, but it took no prisoners, was limiting (no swell again) and there was a fearsome fellow of the college who hated it being used for practice as his room was just around the corner from the organ loft! Pembroke choir had a reputation for being fun and friendly in my day, but that was a while ago! Selwyn organ has been replaced since my day so can't comment. Peterhouse's organ is due to be replaced with a slighly crazy scheme for Klais and Flentrop to collaborate on a new/old organ with two actions and two consoles, currently stuck at design stage - see https://www.pet.cam.ac.uk/organ Corpus is a biggish 3-man mander with (i believe) EP action from the 1960s. I've rehearsed in the chapel loads but never heard the organ being used, or indeed heard anyone saying anything about it, good or bad. HTH a bit. Others will hopefully be along to provide more detailed / up to date info for you.

Indeed, Ripon is a lovely place. I was in St Alban's Abbey recently, and admired the newly-restored (pretty much from rubble!) shrine of St Amphibalus in the S Quire Aisle. Much of the new carving on it having been carried out during the 2020 lockdown, one of the gothic-style stone figureheads sports a PPE mask!

Also, does anyone know anything about this little Victorian-looking organ recently nestled up near the high altar at Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford? I spotted it on the Oxford Bach Soloists' outstandingly excellent St John Passion video on Good Friday.

A glimpse of the nave console at Ripon

This one's a bit blurry, but shows the Kelvingrove Lewis in action.