Favourite "organ moments" in orchestral music

[Maestro267]

The appearance of an organ in a piece of music often sends that piece to a new level of awesome. Your favourite such moments, please.

Any works which feature an orchestra are allowed, including choral/vocal works.

I'll start off with the third movement of Vaughan Williams' Sinfonia antartica. The pedal notes are used throughout the movement, but the climax comes with an incredible all-stops-out organ solo.

[Luke]

Hate to be 'that guy' but the organ entry first appearance of said instrument at the end of the first movement of Brian's Gothic is the first that springs leaps to mind.

[Luke]

The solo movement and other interjections in Janacek's Glagolitic likewise

[Brian]

The solo movement and other interjections in Janacek's Glagolitic likewise

That's my pick.

And, also, when the organ part is included in Elgar's Enigma Variations, it's thrilling. I heard it done live at the Proms with organ a month or so after we saw the "Gothic", and now my mental radio's Enigma always includes organ.

[Luke]

Strauss tends to reserve the organ for very special moments of religious or pantheistic symbolism, often very effectively. The opening of ASZ is a obvious example but I find the Credo and Magnificat entries a little later more potent. Late on in the Alpensinfonie there's a quasi-religious organ solo that serves a special hymnic function (it is followed by that cool horn solo in which the concluding rests are given expression marks 'in sanfter extase')

[(poco) Sforzando]

Hate to be 'that guy' but the organ entry first appearance of said instrument at the end of the first movement of Brian's Gothic is the first that springs leaps to mind.

Fortunately it did not spring to my mind. What sprang to my mind was the organ's first entrance in the Saint-Saëns "Organ" Symphony.

[pjme]

Vaughan Williams : Job scene 6

https://youtu.be/Re2jHx7L9AE

Bela Bartok : Bluebeard: opening of the fifth door:

https://youtu.be/aRLLydZCNdw
at ca 30.00

or
https://youtu.be/Wbr_rDmkAD8


Respighi : Vetrate di chiesa:

https://youtu.be/pidXzX0wZf0

Barber's Toccata festiva, Frank Martin's Erasmi monumentum...Richard Strauss Festliches Praeludium.

Jan Hanus: Symphonia concertante for organ, harp, timpani and string orchestra - conducted by Karl Ancerl.

https://youtu.be/qTBqk5YMwho

P.

[Karl Henning]

Now that mention has already been made of Janáček . . . 

The organ has always been a great part of my enjoyment of Stravinsky's Canticum sacrum.

[(poco) Sforzando]

No doubt it is also very impressive in the final moments of the Mahler Resurrection, if you can hear it through all the other din. (I am fairly sure the two or three live performances I have heard, excerpt for Gilbert Kaplan in 1997 at the Royal Albert in London, didn't use an organ at all.) But it is also impressive, and audible, at the start of the Mahler 8th, I being one of the people who like the opening movement of that work far more than the other.

[Cato]

I thought the topic meant the "organ moment" where the orchestra sounds like an organ!

Basically every Bruckner symphony came to mind!  0:)

[pjme]

The first bars of Honegger's fifth symphony also remind me of a huge organ prelude.

https://youtu.be/pEVSq6Jl5JA

Alfredo Casella : second symphony ... go directly to the last 3-5 minutes...

https://youtu.be/KDslVGf7OTQ

Martinu's youthful Czech rhapsody !A real stunner : https://youtu.be/0KogIxfV9Rk
Go to 22.00 and join in with saint Wenceslas and his heavenly forces.....


P.

[Cato]

The first bars of Honegger's fifth symphony also remind me of a huge organ prelude.

https://youtu.be/pEVSq6Jl5JA

P.

Good choice!

Also "organesque" is the opening to the second movement of Dvorak's Ninth Symphony.

[(poco) Sforzando]

I thought the topic meant the "organ moment" where the orchestra sounds like an organ!

Basically every Bruckner symphony came to mind!  0:)

As I read it, the poster referred to "the appearance of an organ in a piece of music." But for all the fullness and richness of his most massive orchestrations, there are many things in Bruckner that to me do not sound organ-like at all (e.g., the opening of the 7th, the scherzo of the 9th). Like "Beethoven the thunderer" and "Debussy the wispy," "Bruckner's organ orchestra" is one of those clichés that I don't believe stands up to close examination.

[Cato]

As I read it, the poster referred to "the appearance of an organ in a piece of music." But for all the fullness and richness of his most massive orchestrations, there are many things in Bruckner that to me do not sound organ-like at all (e.g., the opening of the 7th, the scherzo of the 9th). Like "Beethoven the thunderer" and "Debussy the wispy," "Bruckner's organ orchestra" is one of those clichés that I don't believe stands up to close examination.

Quite true: certainly the Bruckner symphonies have many many non-organ sections.  However I was thinking of things like the first movement of the Fourth Symphony, bars 288-333 (Letter K) in the Nowak score.

[Maestro267]

Two of Arnold Bax's symphonies make great use of organ. The deep pedal C adds incredible tension in both the slow movement and the finale of No. 2, and the ending of the first movement of No. 4 uses the organ to great effect as well.

[pjme]

And so does Bax in Christmas eve, which is a lovely score.

https://youtu.be/gGbUZ_hWTC0


For Bax at his most flamboyant and extravagant - with plenty of heavy organ chords: London Pageant and Paean! 

Joseph Bohuslav Foerster's symphony nr 4 "Easter eve" - the organ appears in the finale and quotes an old Czech Easter song.

And, on a recent disc: C.M.Loeffler's La villanelle du diable - which has a great organ solo aswell!



P.

[jochanaan]

In Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, towards the end of the Credo, the organ suddenly comes to the forefront and it is very impressive.

Perhaps my favorite organ moment is the glissando in Holst's The Planets.

Mahler's Eighth has already been mentioned; my favorite organ moment from there is almost at thee end, where the orchestra falls silent for a few bars while the organ and chorus thunder.

[Jo498]

Really, I though the organ was more or less ad lib. (doubling the bass line) in Beethoven's Missa and is often left out altogether?

[(poco) Sforzando]

Really, I though the organ was more or less ad lib. (doubling the bass line) in Beethoven's Missa and is often left out altogether?

An organ part is present in the score, but at various times B writes "senza organo" and the bass line is doubled (possibly as a kind of continuo). However, at no point does the organ play anything independent, and it's possible that he included the instrument only for liturgical use (as if this work was ever used in an actual service). But I've never heard the organ in any performance I've encountered, live or recorded.

[Jo498]

That's why I was surprised at the remark further above. I do not remember the organ sticking out on any recording and I have heard/seen the piece once live in a church and more recently in a theater and I do not remember a prominent organ in either case.

While a prominent organ can have a spine tingling effect because it suddenly adds a rather different tone color to the orchestra (and has the sound power to "counter" the whole orchestra), I have to admit that I tend to think of this as a rather "cheap trick" and do not really like the organ in orchestral works...