Tue Mar 15, 2022 10:13 pm
I'll happily put in a good word for this instrument, not as an authentic representation of an unmodified E.M. Skinner organ (which it most definitely is not), but as a very nice example of twentieth-century American organ building as it once existed in hundreds if not thousands of houses of worship and civic buildings across the North American continent. In my (only somewhat educated) opinion, the principal stops, reeds and strings on this organ are quite lovely. The flutes, though perhaps not the standouts, are very nice as well. With the exception of a couple of solo stops (French Horn, English Horn), very little seems unmistakably Skinner to me, but the specification still offers a whole lot of color and the ensemble isn't bad either. Add in the harp, chimes, and celesta and you have a fine organ that can stand in for any number of "lovingly modified" Skinners, Austins, Kimballs, Casavants, etc from this time period.
The demo set should be more than sufficient to judge the character and quality of this organ. The sampling quality, to my ears anyway, meets or exceeds the bar set by Sonus Paradisi's other recent sample sets and is generally first rate. With a good pair of headphones the organ sounds as real and present as any other Hauptwerk sample set I've played, complete with a few flaws here and there.
So while it's not the landmark Skinner I've been waiting for (yes, please to Woolsey Hall or Girard College if they ever happen), I'm very much enjoying this set in the meantime.
A couple of additional thoughts:
* The sampled acoustic is just right for my taste. Warmly reverberant but not so wet that detail starts to get lost.
* The pedal matrix with assignable presets is a wonderful addition for organists with only 1-2 swell shoes available. This should be a built in feature in Hauptwerk IMO. Much more useful than tying the swell shoe assignments to the floating division manual assignments.