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keyboardnotes-blog · 12 years ago

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Royal Festival Hall Organ

During the last couple of weeks I had the chance to hear the newly refurbished Royal Festival Hall Organ twice. The first opportunity was during a tour of the hall and organ given by William McVicker who over the last 6 years has been overseeing the renovation work. It was a unique chance to hear something about the hall itself, it’s acoustic characteristics and hear the organ from the stalls either side. Some of the visitors (including my mum) had a chance to play it too. The hall is less dry acoustically now (given it’s reworking over the last few years) than it was when it was built, but it’s not hard to imagine how dead to any sort of echo it once was. It is still very dry, which leads to an immediacy in the sound of the organ which I’d never heard before. Previously I’d always heard organs in churches and the RAH where there’s much more reverberation melting the sound together. It feels like the organist is more exposed in the RFH. The difference in stops is marked and so the contrasts can be extreme unless carefully controlled. The bass has a clarity I’d not heard before, especially not at that volume! And prior to the recital given later by McVicker I hadn’t heard organists holding the final chord in pieces like Von Himmel hoch until all the pipes seemed to come into phase together. If the hall weren’t so dry there wouldn't have been such definition audible and it wouldn’t have felt like the organist was playing with the instrument, not just on it. I’ve no idea how it sounds for the organist themselves – maybe that’s what they always experience.

There’s plenty online about the organ itself – a unique and extraordinary instrument visually and audibly and I’m looking forward to the launch season to hear some unique and extraordinary music on it.

A detail from the central 'monogram' which, along with the square, wooden pipes is the only purely decorative part of the organ.

#RFH #organ

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