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DouglasCorr

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Everything posted by DouglasCorr

  1. If you ask " Is snakeskin or crocodile a better material for Dupre? " then I feel obliged to hit back and propose banana skin for Elgar...
  2. There is a famous dance shoe shop in St Martin's Lane London.... Lots of silver glitter shoes in the window ...I felt uncomfortable about going inside....
  3. My organ shoes were a sort of formal leather slipper with very thin soles and very light weight. It was no problem to buy them. They were great to play in. But after 40 years they fell to pieces (through neglect - not being polished enough!). Then my troubles began.... After looking at lots of shoes - silly prices - army soles -....I bought a Clarks black shoe with leather soles and rubber heels. I had the heels changed to leather and the cobbler obliged to make them Cuban heels as they were rather wide. Then I found the heels were too long and caught on notes so I shortened the front of the heels. The soles were a bit too wide as well, so I trimmed them down as much as I could. .. But I really still couldn't play!!!.. the soles were much too thick - no feeling - one note, two notes couldn't tell.... I spent hours with an electric grinder..... After 18 months I can just about get on with them.. I thought about the OraganMeister shoes, but I've found that shoe sizes are meaningless these days - I'd need at least three pairs to try by post!!
  4. I don’t know if someone has already reported this information here and I missed it, but I have I’ve just come across these astonishing sites: Larips Bach tuning They describe how the embellishment at the head of the title page of Bach’s Clavierubung is actually an explanation of how to tune the keyboard! Much more intriguing than da Vinci code puzzles!! It was in everyone’s face all the time….. There is much else of interest on both sites! This seems to me such a wonderful breakthrough that it deserves more publicity. However, harpsichords can be tuned relatively quickly; I wonder how useful it would be for organ tuning – organs are generally out of tune most of the time to some extent – would the effect of the fine adjustments be lost?
  5. About the Radetsky March ... I recall a radio interviewer asked the organist "How will you play it" - and the witty reply was "At full gallop"!
  6. Only one pedal board really restricts what one can play...and these days a quarter tone key and pedal board is just about essential.
  7. Sorry to be boring - but there appears to be a lot of unnecessary paranoia about people stealing e mail addresses - a little reaseach reveals the following site:- UCL link
  8. You could save a fare to France by going instead to Farnborough Abbey. The organ there FarnboroughAbbeyOrganarrived in 1905. It has a Cavaille Coll name plate - but since he had died in 1899 then it was either second hand or Mutin was using old parts - anyway go and hear it - next series of recitals starts in May. It is truely a remarkable organ, considering it has so few stops - for me listening to it gives far more pleasure than most organs 3 or 4 times the size.
  9. That's really interesting! What might have been... Do you happen to know if Cavaille-Coll prepared a specification to tender for the Royal Albert Hall?
  10. A curious feature of the recent BBC Bach Christmas discussion board, was that the majority of the postings didn’t run to more than one or two replies, if any. Nevertheless, as it was Christmastime and I was sure that there would be many Bach Christmas people with similar obsessions to myself, I decided to try and strike up a conversation. I adopted the alias of Quintadena, surely a magnet in itself? I decided to begin with a sensational headline: “Bach returned as Karl Richter”. I thought that would do the trick. I had one reply. I then decided that Bach Christmas listeners must all be intellectuals, not interested in sensationalism. Some erudition might stimulate a conversation. I therefore presented the following thesis. The statue of the young Bach in Arnstadt is well known (My Webpage). This sculpture was based on contemporary records, forensic evidence, portraits and photographs. It clearly shows that Bach played the organ entirely with his heels; contrary to current teachings. It is therefore a small step to conclude that his virtuoso technique included a chromatic glissando using heels alone; this foreshadowed Liszt’s chromatic glissando for keyboard over a hundred years later. The curious ornament in the Toccata in D minor, thought by many to be an arpeggio, in fact indicates a chromatic pedal glissando……. Still no reply. This was clearly too technical; Radio 3 listeners, without a weekly organ recital, are not what they once were. I decided next on mystery. I reported that by some strange methods, I had been in contact with Jakob, a grave digger at St Thomas’s, who also pumped Bach’s organ. He heard everything, and told me much. How Bach played using all the manuals and with frequent changes…. I offered to divulge even more information… Not one reply!! Clearly it was going to be very difficult for me to have an organ chat. So I thought that I might get something going by counterfeit. I would use a second pseudonym! I decided that no one would connect Speel Fluit 3 with me, but, as I was registering it, the BBC site locked up and crashed. Bad omen?? After a sleepless night, in desperation I decided that I had to raise the stakes. I announced that if no one chatted with me, I would pull out my stopper!!! Not even a “Go on then” or “Do it!” People just didn’t like my typeface.
  11. And its like that every week! - see the music list at http://www.stsulpice.com/Docs/concerts.html What can one say? Its just the greatest! The organ hasn't been messed up by improvements either. January 15th is the Festival of Saint Sulpice - Three cheers for that!!
  12. You were lucky, I didn't think Buxtehude readers used eBay -- my paper back cost me a lot more!
  13. "Oh, one more thing: there is also a good CD of Roth's immediate predecessor at S. Sulpice - Jean-Jacues Grunenwald - I heartily recommend this. The last eight tracks are improvisations - the best I have ever heard on this organ." Thanks for tips.. Can you tell me what label the Grunenwald CD is on that you mention please? And a question - why are people so interested in improvising on light weight themes (see the Christmas improvisiation thread?). An improvisation is ephemeral and so the listener only gets one chance to hear what it is about, so it helps if he already knows the tune, but are there any other reasons? I haven't heard all the Cochereau recordings you mention - but it was the light weight themes that put me off (inspite of the great skill).
  14. I was pleased that I had bought the Couchereau DVD - although the improvisations seemed rather unlike the more serious Tournemire ones, for my choice. I have had vastly much more enjoymnet from the amateur video of Daniel Roth at St Sulpice at http://www.stsulpice.com/Docs/video.html choose Improvisation (long) (WINDOWS MEDIA 3.7 MByte; 4 October 1998). Great reach on to the fifth manual!!
  15. Thanks for the tip - looks interesting read, I've just ordered a copy. Here is a tip of mine - I recently decided to buy the very expensive book "Dietrich Buxtehude: Organist in Lubeck" - as a Christmas present for myself . Not withstanding the postage, it was vastly cheaper from the US Amazon site than the UK site!!!
  16. Considering Bach is the number 1 topic for people interested in organs, I wondered how long it would take before a message was posted about the BBC Bach series. I mentioned it in my post on Quintadena, on the 13th December, and also mentioned Karl Richter. But it did not stir any correspondance. People are too busy designing 10 stop organs? And there were no comments about how Wayne Marshall interprets the D min Toccata either?
  17. On overnight flights I always throw away the black eye screen things because I can’t sleep anyway. But now I think they may be worth hanging on to. At the opening recital of the RAH organ, video screens showed us the pedals, the stops and keyboards. We were astonished by the technique required in pieces like the Liszt BACH (from a flamboyant edition?). But there was plenty of visual space to rest ones eyes on; just to listen, as in the olden days. Recently I went to a recital in a Parish Church and a video screen occupied the whole of the centre of the nave. After some initial interest, on which sounds came from which manual and in getting visual cues corroborating stop changes - I started to go mad…. I couldn’t look away from the waving arms and legs. I couldn’t sit the other way around as there were pews and not chairs – time to put on the black overnight flight blind !! Video screens: interesting; educational; crowd puller; nuisance? Bring back the unseen organist!
  18. I notice in the forthcoming Bach programmes on the BBC there are a number of recordings of Karl Richter and the Munich Bach choir. What I particularly used to like about these was that the organ continuo generally featured an unforgettable quintadena stop. I have always been disappointed that this type of stop does not appear more widely in new organ specifications. I would have thought it would be an essential colour for much organ music up to the early 18th century.
  19. What you describe seems to me to be clearly more of a problem with the air conditioning in the hall rather than the organ itself!
  20. I’ve just received my programme for concerts at the Turner Sims Concert Hall in Southampton and I’m upset to see that another concert season will go by without an organ recital. The extensive 3 manual Peter Collins organ has not featured in a recital for a number of years now, excepting by John Scott Whiteley at the end of last season: this was well attended and the instrument sounded wonderfully. In past times there were three concerts a year, one in each term. I think the current situation is a very sad; it represents a shameful neglect of a significant concert instrument by the university, its music department and the concert hall management. I shall be writing to them.
  21. The Cavaille Coll organ at Farnborough now has a web site http://www.cavaille-coll.co.uk/ As previously pointed out, this organ is musically far more effective than instruments twice the size. Well worth hearing - and seeing the Abbey Imagine you are in France....
  22. It looks as if the Totentanzorgel CD is available at http://www.luebeck.de/aktuelles/pressedien...000/4/000327rk/ I recently had a difficult time buying organ music from a publisher in Cologne who wouldn't take a card or UK cheque - the only cost effective solution was to send Euros in an envelope! I wonder if there will be similar problems as well as difficult phone calls?? Who will voluntier to break the ice??
  23. By coincidence I have just ordered this as a Christmas Present (for myself!) from http://www.solstice-music.com/caddie/detai...3eb2130aa34640c This is on the Disques du Solstice web site.
  24. Yes it was Bath Abbey - I'm glad I'm not the only one who found it difficult..!
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