Carillon de Westminster (Suite III Op. 54, No. 6)

A new sample set is always a cause for celebration and, perhaps, even more so when it is a cathedral organ.
I received this sample set as an incredibly generous birthday present and I have been having a wonderful time with it.

The question of what to record first is a tricky one and I thought that an old favourite could be a good starting place, especially as I had planned to record it on the wonderful Mühleisen organ of the Stiftskirche Stuttgart and it was, therefore, under the fingers.

This, however, presented something of a dilemma, in that I did not want to miss out on recording it on that organ too, so, how about doing a side by side as I had done once before with some Franck.
But then, it seemed a shame to not hear it on the “real thing” too….

So, today’s project was to record the Carillon de Westminster not just once, but three times on three quite different organs.

This proved to be something of a challenge as I did not want to let my usual standards slip, however, I also did not want to develop a repetitive strain injury!!

So here, for better or worse are three performances of the Carillon de Westminster, on three different organs, with three different sets of errors no doubt, uploaded over three days.

Apologies for taking up your bandwidth with this, but you don’t have to listen apart from out of morbid curiosity. Hopefully the organs will impress, at least…..

St Edmundsbury comes first in what is an “English Cathedral” performance, but somewhat informed by my interest in the French symphonic repertoire.