Festival Alleluias for Easter

This amazing composition by William Ferris is based on Charles Marie Widor’s Toccata from his Symphony #5. It adds choral “Alleluias” (and optional brass) to the original organ score to create an uplifting anthem to celebrate Easter.

The performance is by the William Ferris Chorale (from the Chicago area) and by Organist, Thomas Weisflog, from Rockefeller Chapel and the University of Chicago (where they rented a Rodgers organ for five years during the restoration of their magnificent Skinner Pipe Organ).

The instrument used in this recording is a hybrid (pipe & digital) organ built by Triune Music who successfully combined a Rodgers digital organ with 5 ranks of Ruffatti pipework. It should be noted that the church’s budget for an organ was approximately $325,000 which was not enough for a complete pipe organ. As a result, Triune Music (with the assistance of Fratelli Ruffatti) designed a case that would ultimately hold around 40 ranks of pipes which can be added later when additional funds may be available when the building debt is paid off.

You can find many other recordings of this work on YouTube with much larger pipe organs, yet none of these recordings (IMHO) sound any better than this modestly-priced hybrid instrument even with its present compliment of five ranks. Happy Easter!

Видео Festival Alleluias for Easter канала Triune Music, Inc.