FESTIVAL OF GREAT ORGAN MUSIC

Opportunity to hear the 3,604-pipe Casavant

Opportunity to hear the 3,604-pipe Casavant

One end thunders like artillery, while the other issues the thin notes of a flute. Welcome to the Casavant Opus 3690 pipe organ, a magnificent instrument played by James Cochran at the Festival of Great Organ Music on June 4 at Hayes Hall, Naples. The device with pipes ranging from flagpole-sized to a pencil is spectacular. “Adorned with twin curving consoles like chokers, and stretching out a hand for the kissing with her retractable chamade trumpets,” a music critic wrote of a similar organ to the one built in Canada and reassembled in Naples.

Reputation is why those funding the musical instrument in Naples chose the Casavant Freres, a “jewel” of the pipe-organ industry. The Montreal manufacturer dates to 1879, when two brothers, one a blacksmith, started the firm that would eventually construct several thousand pipe organs―Opus 3690 (electro-pneumatic action) representing its sequential number. The beauty of the instrument is in the wood, seasoned and cut just so, and the special metal for the piping. “Then you work with Jean-Claude [Gauthier] to create a visual design to fit the physical structure in which the organ will be located,” a Casavant executive said in an interview.

That same executive and an accomplished organist, Stanley R. Scheer, on a sunny May morning in 1990 sat at the massive instrument at its installation in Naples. “It’s easy to tell that Stan Scheer is having a good time, and his listeners are thrilled to happy tears,” Norman Nadel wrote in a story headlined “Casavant Opus 3690, A gift from the Developers of Pelican Bay and Friends of the Phil.”