foraloysius wrote,
There are several performances on Youtube. I like this one.
EEEEEEEEK! Ouch, my ears!! (With all due respect)
To me, the mixtures (shrill-sounding stops) in this organ are not well regulated and finished, and sound too loud and too screechy. That may be partly due to the quality of the recording, but my ears "know" what the real sound probably is like, having heard so many pipe organs in my life. And I have a feeling this organ is very, very "bright" live and in person.
When I was an organ student in the mid 1970s and learned organ registration "à la baroque," which was very much in vogue at the time, I would have said just the opposite - the screechier, the better! But not only have my tastes changed (for the better, I think), I have also realized that the average person in the pew will better tolerate a mellower sound than this. And since they pay my salary, I have learned to defer to their sensibilities ... to an extent!
Currently, the prevailing "school of thought" in pipe organ building and design overall is a return back to more robust and full-sounding voicing. What in the organ world is called the "romantic" or "symphonic" style.
Also, in my opinion this organist is just "tossing off" the sublime and richly meaningful chorale with no expression, emotion, or spiritual empathy. He plays "deedle-deedle-deedle" like he's playing on a mechanical sewing machine. I personally would take it more slowly, with more rubato (slightly elastic tempo) and with a much mellower registration. It can be a grand and full sound, not saying I'd play it on "String Slush," but I'd tend more toward building up the foundations and chorus reeds rather than going for the mixtures straight away.
