Best organ in the country?

[Simon]

Why can't we ALL simply be polite...? Ah well...

Well, we have been up till now. But if you look back through the thread, you'll see where the rot set in and the insults began ... and grew more offensive.

It's typical, of course. Any differing opinion, no matter how experienced or well-founded, for such as GG becomes that of a "bigoted idiot". The Gordon Brown syndrome again. Yet the points that initially VC and then I made were both reasoned and reasonable, as any organist would agree.

[amateur51]

Well, we have been up till now. But if you look back through the thread, you'll see where the rot set in and the insults began ... and grew more offensive.

Please miss, a big boy did it .... and ran away!

[Simon]

Apologies to all, but I feel I need to make the following clear then we can be done with it.

I think Am 51 has yet to grasp that I do not respond to his posts because I cannot see them as I have set him to "ignore". For the sake of the current happy atmosphere here, I have no wish to get involved in any more discussions with him, as, based on past experience, I feel that they may well become acrimonius and furthermore would be a complete waste of my time. And his. So there is little point him stalking the threads I post on and trying to annoy me! I do hope that he will take this point and I wish him well for the future.

[ahinton]

Well, we have been up till now. But if you look back through the thread, you'll see where the rot set in and the insults began ... and grew more offensive.

It's typical, of course.

Of what, precisely?

Any differing opinion, no matter how experienced or well-founded, for such as GG becomes that of a "bigoted idiot". The Gordon Brown syndrome again.

What possible connection, however tenuous, that Gordon Brown might be seen to have with a thread about British organs I have less than no idea and probably want to have less again.

[amateur51]

Apologies to all, but I feel I need to make the following clear then we can be done with it.

I think Am 51 has yet to grasp that I do not respond to his posts because I cannot see them as I have set him to "ignore".

I wonder how Simon knows that I'm posting then?

What was it that Shostakovich apparently said about his symphony no 5? - "a Soviet artist’s creative response to justified criticism."

[Lizzie]

Oh Chaps! Can't we just get back to talking about organs...? Liz

[peterdevile]

Ok then. In no particular order....

Coventry Cathedral - Harrison French-style
Westminster Cathedral - Absolutely perfect
Southwark Cathedral - Underrated, but very exciting
St Mary of Eton, Hackney Wick - Where? I hear you cry.... A huge red-brick church, which is in a terrible state, with a Walker organ that was rebuilt in the 60s by Grant Degens and Rippin. It is 2 manuals and sounds like a French Cathedral organ, due to the 4 second echo!
Royal Hospital School, Holbrook. Ipswich - 4 manual HNB 1933 in a chapel with 10 second echo.....

[Contre Bombarde]

Good list, especially Southwark with the glittering principal chorus on the Great Organ. I will suggest the Grove at Tewkesbury, St. Mary de Lode in Gloucester and St **** in *********, the church in my parents village;an 1892 Father Willis which is original and untouched apart from an electric blower and an exceptionally good restoration by Mander in the early 1990s. A stunning 2m+p with 12 stops which I play for a few Sundays each summer during the vacs to give the regular organist a break. It is perfect, so much so that I usually play 3 or 4 voluntaries after the service before pulling the Choir to Pub coupler.

St Ouen (and I'm including only organs that I know well from the inside) for me still wins hands down in the international section with St Sulpice running a very close second. I'd like to include the organ in Sacré-Couer which is so thrilling as to be beyond belief but is damned hard to get near these days (and it needs tuning...).

Edit. I'll add Saint-Louis en L'ille, Paris, if I may, as a totally wonderful example from Aubertin.

[ardcarp]

OK. As we're back on topic, I'll throw in Buckfast Abbey in Devon. It's a Ralph Downes designed Walker with (unusually) a roller-schweller [or however you spell it] and ventil control of the big reeds. It is not in tip-top condition these days, but (a) it's in a very generous acoustic, (b) it can sound more 'French' than most English organs and (c) it has gravitas without blowing your head off.

[choralclerk]

I think mine would be...

Truro
Salisbury
Gloucester
Blackburn
Hereford
St Pauls
Westminster Abbey
Winchester

Generally in that order - but it depends what for! I could go on for months!

[peterdevile]

OK, but why not ignore Cathedrals, Abbeys, Minsters and Collegiate chapels.......

[Simon]

OK, but why not ignore Cathedrals, Abbeys, Minsters and Collegiate chapels.......

I suppose they are the ones that most people here have played, to be fair. But I take your point.

I have a CD with a recording from a church in Manchester at a place called Stand. I don't know exactly where the CD is at the moment so I can't give more details, but I seem to remember it was one of the recognised makers - Willis or Nicholson probably - and it sounds superb! Some wonderful reeds. I wouldn't mind playing it, that's for sure. :)

[Vile Consort]

.. or at least, they will be the ones we've heard recordings of!

There is a wonderful instrument in St Joseph's RC, Keighley. One of the last instruments by local builder Laycock and Bannister, and dating from 1974, it has a mere eleven stops, but in that generous acoustic it sounds quite fabulous. Lovely responsive mechanical action, singing tone - brilliant for the north German repertoire. A previous organist claimed that even the mixture on its own sounded perfectly musical.

If you want a more romantic instrument, Halifax Minster takes some beating. It has several ranks from the instrument built in 1766 by Snetzler, when William Herschel was (briefly) the organist before heading off to Bath and a new career in astronomy. It was rebuilt in 1929 by Harrison's, and has been little altered since. Full swell almost blows you down the nave, yet with the box closed it is reduced to a mere whisper.

[Simon]

That Halifax one looks a beast, VC. And the Keighley one could be on my way to where I have to go to, occasionally - I'll try and look in.

I like the note (Halifax) that the "Red warning light above Choir stops operated when "Great Reeds on Choir" is drawn."

Very useful! A few years ago I was asked at short notice to do a funeral in a largish church I'd never been in before. I arrived on time, but already there were people there and I couldn't really experiment. It was an old, but excellent, 3 manual. The stop names were in that olde englishe/hochdeutsch script that you see - and some had been almost worn away over the years. Nonetheless, by the last hymn I was becoming a little more daring - in other words, overconfident. I can't recall what I wanted to draw - I think I'd seen some kind of clarinet - but I missed it and drew a trumpet instead.

Oh for a little red warning light then - I might have started the verse a bit late, but that would have been better. I was in full view too: nowhere to hide.

[ahinton]

OK, so here's for abit of a change - not an instrument yet constructed but one that may well be in the not too distant future, inspired by the central core of the project concerned. Kevin Bowyer has put together a specification for an instrument whose contruction he may well supervise and which he has put together principally for the purpose of accommodating the three symphonies for organ solo by Sorabji which are arguably the most demanding repertoire ever written for the instrument and which occupy in total more than 18 hours. The site on which this detail is presented hasn't been updated for a while, but the première of Sorabji's Second Organ Symphony - at an improbable nine hours, the largest of the three - has taken place in the interim, last June on the organ of Glasgow University Memorial Chapel.

http://www.sorabji-organ.org/instruments.html