1929 Hall, Norman & Beard; 2000 Schantz organ at Town Hall, Melbourne, Australia

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Programs that feature this organ

#0221: Organic Opera

It’s all about the theatre of the imagination on our next Pipedreams program, as we put away our hymn books and follow the King of Instruments to the opera house. Enjoy familiar melodies from Rossini, Puccini, Mozart and Gounod, excerpts from Thais and I Puritani, The Barber of Seville and Die Fledermaus done up in a way you’d never expect. Hear Simon Gledhill at the Sanfilippo Music Salon and Thomas Heywood at Melbourne Town Hall. Delight in mechanical player-organs from the 19th century, and the stunning virtuosity of Wayne Marshall at Peterborough Cathedral. These magic flutes sing a different song, as we explore repertoire from the lyric stage minus the prima donas and helden tenors. Enjoy highlights from Puccini and Donizetti, Mozart, Massenet and Vincenzo Bellini, as we present the extraordinary, even nutritious (?) sounds of organic opera this week on Pipedreams.

#0314: Out in the Hall

If you naturally think of the pipe organ as a church instrument, think again. This week, we celebrate three organ installations from concert Halls in China, Australia and England. Carol Williams shows off the Connecticut-built Austin organ in the Forbidden City Concert Hall in Beijing, Thomas Heywood gives us the before-and-after treatment at Melbourne Town Hall, where the 1929 Hill organ was expanded and modernized by the Schantz Company of Ohio, and at the new concert hall in Birhmigham, England, Thomas Trotter pulls out all the stops. Click and listen to concert music for concert instruments. This week, we’re not in a church but Out in the Hall.

#0324: Matrimonial Magic

If this music makes you think of weddings and beautiful brides, you’re right on target. This broadcast is a collection of preludes, processionals and other pages in praise of matrimony and the emotions and circumstances which lead us to the altar. Whether it be Handel’s Hornpipe or Mendelssohn’s familiar Wedding March, a Salute to Love by Elgar, or Duke Ellington’s In a sentimental mood, you’ll be amazed by the various ways composers have dealt with love and its ramifications. Trumpet tunes and blessings, salutes to love and lullabies, it’s all part of the package when two people tie the knot at a June wedding, and we provide the music appropriate to a chapel or cathedral creating Matrimonial Magic.

#0429: Archive of Purcell's Pleasure

Beyond the familiar Trumpet Tune, this week’s broadcast features many pieces by one of England’s foremost masters, one of his contemporaries and some later imitators. He’s justly celebrated, but sometimes for not quite the right reasons. Henry Purcell, the foremost English composer of the late seventeenth century, is our particular fascination on the next Pipedreams broadcast, when we’ll listen to everything he wrote for organ, plus some pieces that he DIDN’T, but to which his name is traditionally and tenaciously attached nonetheless. With period instruments and grand cathedral organs played by Robert Woolley, John Butt, John Scott, Davitt Moroney, and even Virgil Fox, we go on beyond the familiar Trumpet Tunes to hear Voluntaries and Marches, Anthems, Songs, and Dances, looking back through 3 centuries in tribute to the memory of one of Britain’s famous past masters.