 |
| All Saints choristers (plus some BBC Friends!), 14 November 2010 |
In the meantime, I'm about to embark on documenting the sound of the organ as it presently stands. Some of these recordings will land up here, no doubt. I hope it will be possible to carry the documentation through to the completion of the project, too, so the the end result can be compared.
All Saints is extremely fortunate in the gifting of this instrument. I've posted other information about the organ elsewhere on the blog, so I' won't repeat what's already available. Someone asked me what the difference between the organ currently at All Saints and its (soon-to-be) replacement is: my reply was that it's like switching from analog to digital. A high-quality instrument opens possibilities, where a poor instrument effectively shuts those possibilities out.
This track features the foundations on the Great (open and stopped diapasons, coupled to the pedal bourdon), and the Swell reeds (cornopean + oboe; the latter covers some of the notes which don't sound in the former). There are a couple of ranks which will benefit from better regulation, while the action is a little on the sluggish side (the original tracker action has been hooked up to pneumatic machines beneath the windchests). Many organists devote time to concealing poorly-voiced ranks and playing with extreme variations of touch to overcome idiosyncratic actions. As counter-instinctive as it seems, the aim of this little project is to make a warts-and-all record of the organ, right down to highlighting some of those things which I would normally work to hide.
Here it is: Wachet Auf [BWV 645] -- J.S. Bach.
No comments:
Post a Comment