My first visit to Southwell Minster was a surprise visit for my 50th birthday to play the Screen Organ there. My 40th birthday had seen a visit to Salisbury Cathedral and my 60th went unmarked, which must mean my 70th is coming up next year and must be a very auspicious venue indeed! Time will tell. Southwell Minster hire one of our organs Anyway, back to Southwell, about 18 months ago we had been asked to prepare a proposal for a hire instrument to cover the cleaning and refurbishment of the instrument I had played almost 20 years before. We were booked for January 2024 but as is the nature o ..read more

After the last two years working with Ralph Allwood and the Trinity Laban Choir at the Old Royal Naval Chapel (ORNC) in Greenwich, we once again returned to St Margaret’s Church in North Oxford for a filming session concentrating exclusively on organs. Showcasing the Ensign range of new Physis Plus organs recently launched in the UK market. The team deep in thought We retained a small link with Trinity Laban as our performer for the day was Jonathan Eyre. He is the organist at the ORNC and a somewhat prodigious publisher on YouTube of organ playing on our instrument in the chapel. Showcasing f ..read more

It’s probably about 4 or 5 years since Anna Lapwood came to our attention as a prolific user of social media to present her enjoyment of the organ in lots of guises and locations. Our first meeting with her occurred just before lockdown in 2020 when she purchased in the nick of time her first Viscount home practice instrument. A 2 manual Chorum 40-S. You may well have seen some of the many videos she published on that instrument covering a wide range of topics from instructive to comical. I particularly like the Coffee Cantata edition and one I can no longer find balancing a toilet roll on her ..read more

One of the great joys of working in this business is the variety of people and locations we get to meet and visit. On that score it would be hard to beat St Mary’s Church in Beverley on both measures. Many will associate Beverley with the better known Minster but if you ever find yourself in the area do visit both buildings which are very fine examples of the medieval building skills to be found all over the UK. Beverley Minster retains a fine pipe organ with some original Snetzler ranks while St Mary’s has now, perhaps sadly, lost its huge 4 manual pipe organ. St Mary’s BeverleyA building rep ..read more

The final delivery from Italy in 2023 included the final instruments making up the Ensign Organ Range which replaces the Chorum models based on sampled sound. A few days later we had our trusted photographer lined up to take the images needed for the web site and hard copy literature. The new models are designed with UK customers especially in mind so differ from those available in other parts of the world. Authentic UK voicing The most significant option is of course authentic UK voicing based on the tonal landscape of Hill and Willis. Each instrument has a choice of 3 different ‘Pipe Sets’ w ..read more

To encourage more musicians to take up the organ and existing organists to develop their skills and grow their confidence, the Royal School of Church Music (RSCM) has relaunched Church Music Skills (Organ). This programme could be a great tool for our customers, or anyone who might be interested in learning to play this fantastic instrument. Church Music Skills learning course Church Music Skills is a distance learning course which enables students to become leaders and enablers of music in their local church. It has now been brought into an online environment, with more engaging, interactive ..read more

2023 has been a very encouraging year. The effects of the pandemic seem now to be truly over with our important church customer market back at full throttle. Possibly even at an elevated rate as the high cost of repair of pipe organs seems to be tipping the decisions in favour of a lower cost digital organ solution. This leads me into what many will consider a controversial area of debate. Many times I see the suggestion that a pipe organ is an investment that lasts a life time while a digital organ will last perhaps 15 years and thereafter is destined for the scrap heap. Both statements are h ..read more

(Cherwell School provided the picture, and also gained permission from parents to share this with Viscount Classical Organs for the purpose of sharing this good news story with their audiences.) If you have been following us for a while, you will know how passionate we are about our loan schemes with schools. If there is one thing that is very important to us  – its about what we can do to attract the next generation of young organists, as well as support youngsters who already play. Part of our commitment to do more includes partnering with organisations such as the Royal College of Orga ..read more

St Cecilia is the patron saint of music, and what better way to celebrate it than with Herbert Howells’ beautiful anthem, “A Hymn for St Cecilia”? Cecilia’s traditional feast day is 22nd November. We recorded this piece in the time we had remaining at the end of the session in January, during which we had already recorded all the tutorials for this year’s series, so everyone was rather tired. Unlike the rest of the series, therefore, this is simply a performance with no preceding rehearsal, but it’s so wonderful that we’d like to share it. The musicians of the Old Royal Naval College, led by R ..read more

Written around 1888, Faure’s Requiem is among the most well loved and widely sung of the requiem masses. It’s relatively straightforward to sing compared with, say, Duruflé’s alternative. In this episode of our Choir and Organ Tutorials from the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich we’re presenting a rehearsal and performance of the last movement, In Paradisum, led by Ralph Allwood. It’s particularly appropriate for this time of year, when we remember the dead on Remembrance Sunday and at the feast of All Souls. Serene piece of music that has an ethereal quality In his introduction to the pie ..read more