Episodes: 1996

Although not as popular among organists as the familiar Sonatas of Opus 65 and the Preludes & Fugues of Opus 37, this week’s broadcast is a collection of repertoire from off the beaten path.

A tour of organs old and new in Milwaukee, Mequon, Madison, and Appleton.

A spring quarterly review of recent organ music CD releases.

A collection of music for the Easter season.

A visit to recent installations in San Diego, Sarasota and New Orleans featuring instruments by builders from Missouri, Minnesota, Texas and Florida.

It is as simple as Bach’s instructions, “Push the right key and the right time and the organ plays itself.” With that in mind, we’ll discover just how much diversity there is behind that seemingly obvious instruction. Listen to six American soloists on as many American instruments will treat us to Preludes and Fantasies, melodious chorale-settings and vibrant fugues. In a cross-country survey, from churches in South Dakota, Georgia, Michigan and Utah and university halls in Arizona and Texas, we celebrate Baroque organ music at its best and show Johann Sebastian the American way. It’s the United States of Bach.

Couples at the console revisit the remarkably flexible repertoire for organ duet.

The mammoth 10,000-pipe former Minneapolis Auditorium Kimball organ, still awaiting restoration and relocation in the city’s new Convention Center, provides some music from its Farewell for Now concert with the Minnesota Orchestra and recordings taped just days before it was dismantled for storage back in 1987. Performers include Edward Berryman, Tom Hazleton, Robert Vickery and Hector Olivera with conductor Jahja Ling. Unfortunately, restoration plans for this unique instrument have fallen into limbo. We hope it won’t be too long before there’s good news to report. Meanwhile, enjoy these remarkable archive artifacts. In particular, Olivera’s performance of the Jongen is an audio tour de force.

Solo organ and choral selections feature the 153-rank Schantz instrument in New Jersey’s most imposing cathedral church.

More music by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Leo Sowerby, in celebration of his 100th anniversary.

Resident musician Mary Preston inaugurates the 3-manual, 48-rank mechanical-action instrument designed by Los Angeles builder Manuel Rosales for King of Glory Lutheran Church in Dallas, Texas, recorded March 26, 1995.

We journey back in time on our next Pipedreams program, to the days when movies were real events and movie palaces were the most opulent buildings in the land. The sound of the theatre organ is filled with nostalgia, but these remarkable, resilient instruments are even more vital today, as we discover in conversation with American Theatre Organ Society president Stephen Adams while listening to seventeen different artists and installations. We’ll travel from the Granada Theatre in Kansas City to the Vancouver Orpheum, from Wichita’s Century II Convention Center to the Sanfillipo Music Salon near Chicago. Whether in tunes by Gershwin or Jerome Kern, Chopin or Richard Rodgers, every generation finds its true love in the world of the Mighty Wurlitzer where Everything Old is New Again, this week on Pipedreams.

A tribute to the oldest continuously functional organ-building firm in the United States, Austin Organs, Inc., of Hartford, CT.

Concert performances on the 1987 Kney organ at the University of Saint Thomas in Saint Paul, MN.

Selected works from the organ and other diverse accompaniments, featuring unusual repertoire.

A journey of enhanced perception, guided by Rollin Smith, Towards an Authentic Interpretation of the Organ works of Cesar Franck, with notable and historic examples.

A New Year’s review of some of the most recently available organ music on compact disc, a ‘host’s choice‘.