Landau, St. Maria - Piotr Grabowski

Landau is a small city in the Rheinland-Pfalz region in south-west Germany, close to the French border. The beautiful church of St. Maria (Saint Mary) was built in 1911 in Neo-Romanesque/Neo-Gothic style.

The organ was built in 1924 by Steinmeyer company from Oettingen in Bayern. It has 72 stops distributed between 3 manuals and pedal. The second and third manuals are enclosed. In the 1950s it was modified, to make it more modern, neo-baroque in sound. Unfortunately, this resulted in heavy modifications of the original concept. Even the casing was removed, to give the organ a more modern look. Thankfully, a restoration endeavour from 2010 to 2012, masterfully undertaken by Romanus Seifert & Sohn from Kevelaer (the same company, which built the organ in Goch), restored the organ to its original state. The meticulous work included the recreation of the console, the restoration of the façade, and the careful renovation of the pipework. From the original 4500 pipes, 3500 were preserved. Missing pipes were recreated using the existing pipework and old documents as reference. Everything was wonderfully voiced, resulting in a harmonious, thoughtful, coherent sound.

In the second manual there is a separate small Echo subdivision with a separate enclosure and tremulant, consisting of only two stops: Vox humana 8′ and Echobordun 8′. Perhaps influenced by its proximity to France, it’s a rarity for this organ builder to include two reeds choruses (16′, 8′, 4′) – one in the 1st manual and another in the 3rd.

The second and third manual divisions feature an added octave for the super octave couplers, except for the higher pitched stops.

The pipe delays feature of the sample set (found in the Settings tab) adds delay only to the reed ranks, as the flue ones already have a rather slow speech – characteristic for organs from this era. The real console has a rather unique feature: when using the crescendo pedal, it activates the stop tabs directly, rather than operating in the background. While probably not feasible in the original console, modern recreation technology has made it possible. This behavior can be replicated in the sample set by enabling Show crescendo changes option in the Settings tab.

Manuals compass was extended to 61 keys C-c4 (C2-C7), pedals to 32 keys C-g1 (C2-G4).

This instrument and its pendant, the organ of Corpus Christi church in Berlin (1925) are to be appreciated as the smaller sisters of the world famous organ of Passau Cathedral, which was built between 1924 and 1928. At that time the biggest church organ in the world with 208 stops.