(film starts with Andrew playing a section of a piece of music)
"You can hear there that the organ is very starved of wind at the moment. The pipes are full of dirt and they're not speaking as they should be, and there's just a very, very veiled shadow of the grandeur that was once there - and will be back once again. Even though, impressive though it might sound at the moment."
"One of the interesting things about this organ is the particularly French flavour of the sound, and even yet - at the moment - there are hints of that: a classic sound
of the builder that built this instrument, Aristide Cavaille-Col; what we call the flute harmonic, which is a metal flute stop that is double the length it normally would be, with a little
hole drilled halfway up, which gives it a very full quality. A bit like an orchestral flute, and you can hear that here." (plays a few notes)
"You'd almost think there was somebody inside there blowing a flute. And you might hear as I go up the keyboard (plays a few notes) it gets slightly louder all the time, which really means a melody sings out into the space.
And there are lots of these flute harmonics on the organ, you just heard that one, on a different manual there's another one (plays a few notes) and another one here (plays again.) All different volumes with different timbres as well."
"Another particular characteristic part of the organ is what we call the string stops. Now there's nobody in there playing the strings with a bow, but there are organ stops that sound quite 'stringy' (plays a few notes) and that comes from making pipes that are especially narrow in their diameter, and often with a slot in them as well, which gives them a slightly stringy character. On this organ there are lots of strings and what you can do is put them all together, something like this kind of sound." (plays some more)
"And again - anybody familiar with the French romantic organ would hear that and go "gasp!" There's much beauty as well as grandeur, and that's one of the things that it's important to
try to bring out in this project; that your organ isn't here to make just a grand noise to fill the room, there are many beautiful quieter colours which need to be brought back."