Welcome to The International Historical Organ Recording Collection.

Here you will find historic organ recordings transferred from 78rpms and early LPs. They are all recorded before 1959, which makes them public domain and therefore legally publishable. The transfers are privately made by the owners of the original sources, so these recordings are not digital copies from any commercial reissues.

The commercial interest and profits in reissuing historic organ recordings are low, and therefore a lot of materials have never been transferred to a more up to date medium.

Inspired by the work by Neal Kurz on his very interesting blogsite http://nealshistoricalcorner.blogspot.com/, and with help from Michael Gartz who holds a huge collection of historic recordings, the sound technician, record collector and historian Claus Byrith, and in collaboration with The Royal Academy of Music in Aarhus, Denmark, I will over time try to publish as many important historical organ recordings as possible.

Currently I’m preparing some 78rpm recordings with the young Marcel Dupré recorded in London in 1928, recordings with Jeanne Demessiuex, Fernando Germani, Alfred Sittard, Kurt Grosse, Walter Fisher and the Danish cathedral organist Niels Otto Raasted. The first release however will be the legendary recordings of Charles Tournemire from 1930-31.

I will try to attach as much historical information concerning the matrix number of the transferred 78s, the recording year and label, but I encourage everyone who visits this site to contribute with knowledge, biographical information, corrections and/or with new recordings. Send me a transfer of the source or send me the source itself and I will have it transferred and sent back again.

If, against my best efforts, there are copyright violations of any kind, please let me know and I will remove the items immediately.

The recordings are available as high definition MP3 files and compressed with RAR. Perhaps over time I’ll make the recordings available as lossless FLAC or APE files, but until now the MP3 files will do the job quite fine.

This is the chance to actually hear these historical recordings, many which are almost legendary and examples of musicianship of the highest order.

Feel free to come back and check for updates. I wish you a good luck with the journey into the world of historical organ recordings.

Lars Nørremark
(lars@norremark.dk)

Comments

  1. The lossless format should be most welcome.
    Thank you very much indeed for this great job.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you for the music.

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  3. Excellent work! This is a precious resource on the Web! Thank you very much for sharing the music and your informative introductions.

    ReplyDelete

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