CATHEDRAL PIPE ORGAN
This is a Durban Heritage instrument, a unique, one of kind Abbot and Smith Build. It is their signature organ – completely hand crafted. It arrived from Leeds London in Durban harbour on the HMS Umgeni in 1912. It was hoisted up into the balcony – all 13 tons of Organ!!!
This Roman English beauty has 46 unique instruments over 3 manuals (keyboards of 61 keys), 32 pedal notes with a total of 1733 uniquely voice 105 year old mellowed pipes – a mixture of flute and reed pipes made of metal and wood. She was electrified in 1950 and fully computerised in 2010. The 3 phase below motor from 1950 was rewound recently and returned to the organ with a new soft start system we designed.
She has sat very broken for 2 years but today the refurbishment of this instrument was finally completed and she plays like the day she arrived in Durban in 1912. She has had 10 days of intense voicing and tuning by Jan Zielman and oh what a beauty!!!
The bottom C 32 foot Sub Bass pipes are bellow the frequency of the human ear but shake the foundations – it is something to hear in this beautiful building in Durban.
I used my cell phone that was too close to the console and not a great microphone – but please enjoy the first 2 hymns of this organ which is now fully restored.
Please do not use your cell as these files are over 100 MB – please use a PC/Laptop with a good Internet connection:
