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');document.write('It\'s certainly a great idea to record this, the largest fully-automatic Skinner roll-player organ ever made. The instrument is indeed splendid, and this repertoire of bon-bons is delightfully appropriate. These pieces were not roll-punched \"recordings\" of actual performances, but were rather arranged directly for the roll-player. Freed from the limitations of two hands and two feet, some remarkable effect are possible. The Finale from \"Firebird\" takes full advantage of that, but even more, \"Ride of the Valkyries.\" (Remember, when Anthony Newman recorded the latter at St. John the Divine decades ago, he had several co-pilots working swells, stops, and playing some of the notes.) That\'s the upside. The downside is that the balance is often poor, especially when a Tuba is engaged. Probably, this comes from the \"one size fits all\" approach needed when rolls are created to play organs of all different sizes. Certain stops are expected on all the player organs, but even with the genius of Skinner, one couldn\'t count on the balance between divisions always being the same. The residence organs tended to favor milder voices, in view of their more intimate surroundings (see the two Elm Court CDs for a splendidly restored example), and this was the usual target audience for Skinner\'s organ roll market. I don\'t, I admit, know enough about the technology involved to know how the fully automatic rolls are \"interpreted\" at Toledo to use the resources of an organ easily four times the size of the usual residence organ. I can only comment on the results. It\'s interesting as a document of the instrument and what the player can do, but it\'s not a recording you\'re likely to come back to listening to often.
');document.write(' John Gouwens - ');document.write('March 13, 2010
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