06-02-2023, 06:26 PM
(This post was last modified: 06-02-2023, 06:36 PM by Lucien Nunes.)
Carlo Curley's original 4-manual touring digital Allen organ was commissioned in 1974 and sold in 1979. During that period it was used for his widely acclaimed performances at Alexandra Palace, which were some of the first large-scale organ recitals I went to as a child and where I discovered the immense technical effort required to reproduce the audio adequately. Amplification was by Britannia Row Productions, i.e. Pink Floyd's PA system. He subsequenly used more modern instruments and the original one unfortunately befell the fate of so many flagship electronic organs - it was gutted and modernised and the original electronics cast aside. The playing surface of the console was equipped with Artisan sound engines and installed at the East Sussex National some time around 2012.
Jeffrey mentions the Royal Festival Hall, which was the location of a different pipe vs. electronic scenario. The pipe organ at the RFH was slow off the mark, having been designed by Ralph Downes, built by Harrison & Harrison, and inaugurated in March 1954, despite the venue having opened in 1951. During the intervening period, the hall had been equipped with a Compton Electrone, one of three similar 'Special' instruments of very high specification they built in the early 1950s. This was based on a new type of 6-rank generator designed in 1950 with (IIRC) 30 waveforms, an elaboration of their well established 4-rank unit that had been in production for three years. The RFH Electrone was apparently dismantled by Compton once redundant, although the console probably re-emerged somewhere else with a different identity.
The two sister instruments saw longer service but neither survives as-built today. I own one of them, which was commissioned in 1951 and installed in 1952 at Rowton Castle for the Royal Normal College for the Blind. Designed and inaugurated by (Australian-born) Dr. George Thalben-Ball, who was a trustee of the RNCB; he also performed in the opening recital at the Royal Festival Hall, designed and opened the Southampton Guildhall organ and FWIW taught my piano teacher (who was an organist). Compton updated the Rowton Castle organ in 1965 and equipped it with the latest 21-trace generators and a new stoplist, so we cannot hear what it sounded like in 1952. However, it is still a formidable piece of work in its enormous drawstop console, which houses the generators and amplifiers too. See pic. This is the one I drove back from Alicante in Spain, where it had been taken by its previous owner on his retirement.
Jeffrey mentions the Royal Festival Hall, which was the location of a different pipe vs. electronic scenario. The pipe organ at the RFH was slow off the mark, having been designed by Ralph Downes, built by Harrison & Harrison, and inaugurated in March 1954, despite the venue having opened in 1951. During the intervening period, the hall had been equipped with a Compton Electrone, one of three similar 'Special' instruments of very high specification they built in the early 1950s. This was based on a new type of 6-rank generator designed in 1950 with (IIRC) 30 waveforms, an elaboration of their well established 4-rank unit that had been in production for three years. The RFH Electrone was apparently dismantled by Compton once redundant, although the console probably re-emerged somewhere else with a different identity.
The two sister instruments saw longer service but neither survives as-built today. I own one of them, which was commissioned in 1951 and installed in 1952 at Rowton Castle for the Royal Normal College for the Blind. Designed and inaugurated by (Australian-born) Dr. George Thalben-Ball, who was a trustee of the RNCB; he also performed in the opening recital at the Royal Festival Hall, designed and opened the Southampton Guildhall organ and FWIW taught my piano teacher (who was an organist). Compton updated the Rowton Castle organ in 1965 and equipped it with the latest 21-trace generators and a new stoplist, so we cannot hear what it sounded like in 1952. However, it is still a formidable piece of work in its enormous drawstop console, which houses the generators and amplifiers too. See pic. This is the one I drove back from Alicante in Spain, where it had been taken by its previous owner on his retirement.
