1948 Steinmeyer-1996 Göckel organ at Saint Franciskuskirche, Pforzheim, Germany

It’s kind of like a test drive. This week’s Pipedreams program is a review of a dozen recent compact discs, including one from an obscure - and ravishingly lovely - parish church in Waltershausen, Germany. We’ll visit Saint Mark’s Cathedral, Seattle, the old Paramount Theatre in Brooklyn, a lavish museum near Los Angeles, and Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas, Texas. We’ll have music by Bach and his pupil Krebs, a French organ symphony rediscovered, and an introduction to the explosive improvisational talent of Wayne Marshall, who takes George Gershwin for a ride.

What do a city auditorium in New Zealand, an historic church of in Manila, a Scandinavian university science project and the Tennessee Valley Arts Commission have in common? Each celebrates the art of the organ. This week we’ll savor performances from Christchurch Town Hall, the parish of Las Pinas in the Philippines, the Hamburg Baroque Organ Project of Gothenburg, Sweden and the Unitarian Church in Knoxville where pipe organs, old and new, excite the imagination with ear-intriguing sounds. The proof is in the playing. Enjoy some sonically beguiling CD releases while we’re Going On Record with organ music in review.

…reading notes from a page is one thing, but improvising something new, ‘out of thin air’, is a remarkable skill.

…refreshing scores for organ plus other wind instruments, including trumpet, flute, saxophone, horn and pan-pipes.