A tour of Dutch church organs

A collection of classic organ broadcasts has come on-line recently, thanks to the former Dutch radio service Radio Nederland Wereldomroep. RNW was a major international broadcaster for 50 years, and it produced many series of music programs, sent on vinyl phonograph records to be transmitted by local stations around the world.

Here is a set of performances from 1968 under the series title “Netherlands Church Organs of the 18th Century”. Each program is about 28 minutes long.

My favorite so far is #2: Noordbroek. What’s yours?

2 Replies to “A tour of Dutch church organs”

  1. Oh cool. Any danger that these (and others) will disappear? Reading "sent on vinyl phonograph records to be transmitted by local stations around the world" reminds me of archive.org and the decades of Old Time Radio programs.

  2. Yes, this sort of material is at risk of disappearing.

    In the early decades of radio, many stations never thought to save recordings of programs after they aired. Some stations re-used audio tapes to save money. Some historic recordings only exist because a listener tape-recorded the audio off-air.

    In cases where the recorded media has been retained, often there is no project or funding to copy the programs to digital audio for preservation.

    In the case of Radio Nederland, an archive site was operational after the station's broadcast shutdown in 2012, but it was only partial and disappeared after a while. It's a relief that the newly relaunched archive has appeared at all. For these recordings of classical music, the phonograph LPs make preservation easier. Alas, RNW disposed of many of those too: an internet acquaintance has found them in used-record stores as far afield as Taiwan.

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