Fantasy and Fugue on 'Ad nos, ad salutarem undam'

Hello All,

You are listening to an "experiment in voicing" the Melbourne Town Hall Organ sample library. Although I have presented this instrument (in undisclosed form) for the past two years, this submittal represents the "Maiden Voyage" of the commercially released version.

As Mr. Fazioli has so colorfully described in his original comment to this piece, I really DID intend on presenting as many tonal colors as possible in this one piece. It seems the only available stops I did NOT use were the bass- and snare drums present in the real Melbourne instrument.

Admittedly, this is not a conventional performance of "Ad Nos"; rather this is an experiment in seeing how the piece sounds with many stop changes and usage of all four expression pedals plus the programmable crescendo pedal.

Hopefully, most listeners will hear things they've never heard in this piece. Also I hope that most listeners will enjoy this performance. You may also find yourself somewhat surprised by some the things you will hear -- but that's because I am taking an extremely free hand. This is certainly not the Fantasy and Fugue on Ad Nos as Liszt has composed it; at the same time, Liszt would NOT have been able to play it with the technology of 19th century organ building of his time in the way it is being presented here.

Whether this is right or wrong, or even remotely interesting ... is not my department. What IS my department is to simply play it as freely and as beautifully as I feel possible. This, like almost all of the organ music I play is in a constant state of experimentation. So let's see if this experiment is a success.

Cheers,

Joe