If you are a pipe organ music enthusiast and have always wanted to know more about the painstaking maintenance and preservation of this instrument's inner workings, all hidden away within a massive case behind its non-speaking ornamental facade pipes, I can't but wholeheartedly recommend this in-depth documentary film/recording by Fugue State Films. In 2016 the decision was made to fully clean up, overhaul and restore the Harrison & Harrison organ that resides in the Chapel of King's College, Cambridge. Film-maker Steven Benson and producer Will Fraser took this once in a lifetime window of opportunity to document this year long project from start to finish. This in-depth documentary film is presented and narrated by organist and composer David Briggs.

One summer, way back when I was a teenager, I worked as an apprentice/helper for the Casavant organ firm that was in the process of cleaning up and tuning a fairly large instrument in the city of Ottawa, Canada. I enjoyed the experience very much even though I considered it to be cramped, musty and physically demanding work. But that was nothing compared to the undertaking chronicled in this production. Not only did the 80 year old dust from this 1934 Harrison & Harrison complete rebuild of the previous organ need to be removed, but it was decided that the whole thing should be dismantled, cleaned, repaired, refurbished and put back together again all within a few months in order for the organ to be back in action before the televized broadcast of the Advent Nine Lessons and Carols ceremony which has become an annual event watched by viewers worldwide.

Pipe by pipe, over 4000 of them, wire by wire, plank by plank, including the air pressure motors and the four-manual console itself, everything was taken apart, catalogued, numbered, crated and carried outside the building, loaded onto trucks and transported miles away to the Harrison & Harrison plant where everything was painstakingly refurbished before being crated back to the chapel and all of it intricately put back together again piece by piece. All of this is very well covered during the two-hour film during which you also learn from experts about how pipes are made, how they are tuned and voiced, how they generate sound, and the general layout of the pipe organ itself. The logistics alone of this time-constrained undertaking are mind boggling. I mean, simply deciding in which order to carry out all of these steps must have meant a few sleepless nights for some.

And that's only the first DVD which also includes a fine demonstration of this organ's sonic characteristics presented by organist Daniel Moult, an 18 minute clip from The English Organ. The second DVD contains performances by various organists, all of them previous King's College organ scholars, including Dónal McCann, Henry Websdale, Richard Gowers, Tom Winpenny, Ashley Grote, Robert Quinney and David Briggs playing works by Bach, Messiaen, Howells, Reger and Mendelssohn amongst others, which includes for example an agile and articulate performance of Bach's 'Prelude and Fugue in G BWV 550', and an exhilirating performance of Louis Vierne's 'Carillon de Westminster'. You don't fully realize how technically demanding that organ piece is until you actually see what an organist's hands and feet are required to do during the final minute or so. And does it ever showcase this instrument's brilliance and power. And as well this set includes two CDs which contain the audio only recordings of the same performances.

Fugue State Films have really "pulled out all the stops" on this one!