Usually when you play an organ you have no trouble hearing it, but that's not always the case, according to city organist David Burchell. He will be playing Saint-Saëns Symphony No 3 - Organ Symphony in the Southern Sinfonia's concert on June 8.
''One of the biggest challenges I find in the Town Hall is often you can't hear what you are playing because the orchestra's so loud around you and the organ sound is going out over the top. You have to trust you are playing the right notes because you just can't hear.
"It's a bit weird because normally when you are playing the organ there's no problem hearing it at all,'' he says.
Everyone else can certainly hear the powerful instrument, even those in other parts of the building, so he has to choose his time to practise so as not to disturb anyone.
After the building was opened in the 1930s, the caretaker's daughter, who lived in a flat at the top of the building, said she didn't need an alarm clock as Dr Galloway would be practising the organ early every morning and wake her up, Mr Burchell says.
During the recent renovations to the Town Hall, exposed parts of the organ were covered and the organ chamber shut up to keep out dust.
Electrical and fire protection work was done inside the chamber, and Mr Burchell kept a watching brief to make sure it did not interfere with the workings of the organ.
It was reinstated, cleaned and retuned by the South Island Organ Company in Timaru, which looks after the maintenance of the instrument.
Mr Burchell became seriously interested in the organ and choral singing when he was at high school in the United Kingdom, although he would often ''bash out hymns on the piano at home'' and played for junior school assemblies. He also plays harpsichord, piano and ''anything else with a keyboard that is put my way'', he says.
He and his family came to Dunedin in 2000 when he was appointed director of music at St Paul's Cathedral.
You might think that enough, but he also has an organ at home which required a large extra room to be added to his house.
It was built by Telford and Telford of Dublin and he bought it from Hillside Rd Wesley Methodist church. It arrived in New Zealand in 1864 for the original St Paul's church in the Octagon.
It moved to the St Paul's schoolroom which was used as a temporary church while the present cathedral was built. It served the new cathedral for a couple of years before being sold to the Methodist church.
''It was pretty much unchanged since it was built in 1863, which is unusual. And when it was built it was really quite a conservative instrument for its time.
"I've got a particular enthusiasm for the English 18th-century organ and this is a direct descendant and has many characteristics in common. It's a nice, gentle, singing sort of organ, not a blow-your-head-off sort of instrument.''
Mr Burchell does not have the time to play it as much as he would like, but it is invaluable to practise on when he has a big concert coming up, he says.
''You can only do a certain amount on the wrong instrument but for learning the notes and making sure you are making musical sense, any instrument will do.
"But if you are playing a large instrument like the Town Hall organ, you need time on it to prepare and choose the sounds you are going to use, and set up the computer-aided system for helping you change the stops during the course of the piece.
"It's quite a labour-saver and takes some of the headache out of playing.''
Most organs are found in churches and many people associate them with church music but there is far more to organ music than that and composers still write for the instrument.
''Yes, it has been for 600 years and more a church instrument but it also has repertoire written for concert use going way, way back. The organs in Germany in the 17th century, although they were in churches, weren't actually used for worship.
''The organ gradually came to be used in worship, more so in the 18th century. It was very much a secondary thing to start with.
"The whole puritanical thing was that praise to God should be from a human source and the use of instruments was frowned on, like the Presbyterian Church even in the 19th century.''
After the English Civil War (1642-1651), Oliver Cromwell had organs removed from churches, except those that people managed to hide. However, he took the one from Magdalen College, Oxford, to Hampton Court for his own use, Burchell says.
From the Restoration in 1660 until the last quarter-century, organs were built for Church of England churches. In Catholic countries, many historic organs survived in churches.
In the 19th century, the English installed organs in concert halls. It was a civic status symbol as it had been in Germany in the 17th century. The Dunedin Town Hall organ, installed in the 1930s, was a kind of final flowering, he says.
Organs in concert halls in France were
a comparative rarity, which is perhaps why Saint-Saëns chose to use an organ for his commission for the Royal Philharmonic Society in London. The organ symphony was first performed in St James's Hall in 1886, conducted by Saint-Saëns who was a virtuoso organist and pianist himself.
It was called the Organ Symphony because it makes use of the organ in two of the movements but it is not an organ concerto or a showpiece for the organ, Burchell says.
''I think Saint-Saëns brought the organ into it because he wanted the organ's sonority to complement the orchestra and to contrast with the orchestra.
''There's a slow movement where the organ enters at first very softly, a really sort of ethereal sonority with the strings of the orchestra which is really very beautiful and the organ adds subtle colour,'' he says.
''In the last movement, after it's had a rest for a while, when the orchestra's getting all excited in the scherzo, it comes thundering in with fortissimo chords and a sort of chorale-like tune in the last section.
"It's a real 'wow' moment in music and anyone who has vaguely wandered off will be dragged back from their daydreams.''
Hear him
The Southern Sinfonia's concert, conducted by Edvard Tchivzhel, is in the Dunedin Town Hall on Saturday, June 8, at 8pm.
It features Verdi's La forza del destino overture, Ravel's Piano Concerto in G with soloist Sergio Tiempo, and Saint-Saens' Organ Symphony with David Burchell at the organ.
