“Nutrition in an Age of Diet Soft Drinks”: the Utopa Baroque Organ in Amsterdam

Audio gear compromises the quality of the sounds it is meant to reproduce. In itself that may be acceptable, but its side effect is not, as it leads to relativizing the importance of sound quality in live musicking as well; yet major concert venues replace their pipe organs with organs that use loudspeakers as sound generators instead of pipes. The Orgelpark in Amsterdam counters this development with the Utopa Baroque Organ, inaugurated in 2018. Its 2,500 pipes are voiced as historically informed as possible; moreover, its radically new digital interface affords combining and blowing them in ways never possible before. Meanwhile, comparable “hyperorgans” are being built all over the world. The resulting New Organ Movement inspires musicians from all kinds of provenances to update their skills and, in turn, to demand uncompromised sound quality.