Very powerful! I'm was glad to hear the entire piece. Usually we only hear the opening strains of the toccata which has too many pop culture associations.

I know next nothing about organ technique. How does a performer decide which stops to use? Did Bach indicate them? Are there conventions? Or is it left totally up to the imagination of the performer?

Best,
Jay

That's like totally awsome dude - Bach/Bacos/VSL rock man. [H]

Man, I really enjoyed listening to that. The playing is great, the registers are very tastefully chosen, the organ sounds really really great. I have strong plans to buy it.

But where is the fugue?

It's there all right: approximately 2-2½ minutes into the piece (sorry, no stopwatch in here and I can't, for some reason, download it into iTunes).

You're right, of course. Somehow this one sounded so fragmented to me in the halluzinatic mode I'm currently in that I put it to the Toccata.

@JBacal said:

I know next nothing about organ technique. How does a performer decide which stops to use? Did Bach indicate them? Are there conventions? Or is it left totally up to the imagination of the performer?

bach tended to indicate registrations inconsistently, usually when customary performance practice differed from what he had in mind (there are no registration markings in this piece however). the french have historically been more specific, especially moving into the 19th century, but generally performers are conceptually taught how to combine stops and are left free to choose them at their discretion.

Before attacking this work I listened to as many versions as I could, none used the same stops, some would be completely different sort of like using brass instead of woodwinds for some sections, the only agreement I found was for the opening 2 or 3 measures. So Jay, since you asked I used my own judgement and experimented with sonorities I liked, I was also inspired by some of my favorite versions, I found it was very similar to orchestrating. As far as my own experience with the organ I do play the organ but I'm no real organist, but I had at least a sense of the ped articulation.

Seat belt music. Really great.

Guy - as I wrote you in my private mail already, I'm floored by your performance. That's what everybody has in mind when we think "concert organ". In addition to that I'm a bit proud about the fact that the instrument itself sounds great too. Thanks for your effort!

Just a small addition for all the people who didn't have the chance yet to play the Konzerthaus Organ themselves: although the instrument samples contain all the rich and deep room information of the Vienna Konzerthaus' Great Hall, they take additional reverb very well, like the cathedral Guy used for the Toccata.

Is the organ sampled with several velocity layers? In the middle there's a section with a decrescendo and I assume it was intended by air pressure pedal but it sounded irritatingly like a fade-out...

@mathis said:

Is the organ sampled with several velocity layers? In the middle there's a section with a decrescendo and I assume it was intended by air pressure pedal but it sounded irritatingly like a fade-out...

Mathis,

No swell effects was used if your talking about the section at 4:13 that is a fragment repeated on different manuals, and it was a fade out effect I wanted there as you noticed. Just before the fugue begins you could say the organist made specific changes in the stops setting to have that section ready to play.

holy shit.
this thing sounds great