[Frederik Magle]

January 1st, 2010, I spent rectifying something that has bothered me for some time; the lacking power of the pipe organ in the recording of the Cortège & Danse Macabre and Carillon.

It's no secret that the 92-voice organ in the new Copenhagen Concert Hall (DR Koncerthuset) has been criticized for not being powerful enough, as if there is some kind of "veil" in front of the organ - either because of the acoustics of the hall, the architecture with a front of decorative aluminum tubes, or the instrument itself. Over the summer and fall some major changes has been made that may have fixed the problem, but at the concert in June it was definitely not as powerful as it should have been. I wanted the full organ to significantly increase the power - or rather the "intensity" and richness - of the orchestra when applied at some crucial moments of madness. But, alas, it could not fully match the orchestra like a concert organ of its size is supposed to (though when heard live at the concert it did come through slightly better than on the original recording - at least the pedal (deep bass) lines).

I spent the whole day, yesterday, enhancing the sound of organ in the recording to the level I had originally intended, and now you can hear it as intended (or as close as I could get, which is quite close).

Those of you who downloaded the "old" versions can do a comparison with the new excerpts of the second and third movements if you like.

Here are the new versions (click on the links to download and listen), which I've uploaded in an even better MP3 quality (256 kbps vs. 192 kbps).

EDIT: New further improved versions (320 kbps MP3, FLAC, Apple Lossless, and uncompressed WAV) uploaded July 28th-July30th, 2010: The original post has been updated with the new audio files (scroll to the top of this page).

Enjoy!

Regards,
Frederik