New from Vienna: Great Rieger Organ
Vienna Symphonic Library releases organ of Vienna Konzerthaus
The Vienna Symphonic Library announces the release of Great Rieger Organ, a virtual representation of the legendary organ installed at the Great Hall of Vienna Konzerthaus. The Collection is based on the recordings of the original Vienna Instrument Konzerthaus Organ. It comes with a new sample engine and a user interface tailor-made for organ playing, the Vienna Organ Player. The new product is currently available at an introductory price of €235 (reg. €285). Crossgrade prices for users of VI Vienna Konzerthaus Organ are also available.
To accompany this release, the Austrian company is offering discounts of up to 40% on all piano and keyboard instruments of the VI Series and the Synchron Series.
With 116 stops for its five manuals and the pedal board, the Great Rieger Organ at Vienna Konzerthaus is the largest concert organ in continental Europe. It was built by the famous “Gebrüder Rieger” company of Jägerndorf, Silesia, and installed in 1913 – the year the venerable Konzerthaus in the heart of Vienna officially opened. Being installed in a concert hall – as opposed to an organ in an overly reverberant cathedral – this “Queen of Instruments” is the ideal match for orchestral instruments playing on a scoring stage or in a concert hall.
The Collection is based on the recordings of the original Vienna Instrument Konzerthaus Organ which is still available. The all-new Vienna Organ Player lets users easily manage the manuals and pedal of the organ. The multitude of stops can be accessed conveniently to create and save customized registrations. What’s more, the Vienna Organ Player is multi-timbral so the manuals and the pedal can be addressed separately via dedicated MIDI channels.
Navigating the player is easy using the three main tabs. The COMBINE tab provides an overview of all the organ’s stops as distributed over the manuals and pedal. Manuals and pedal are each routed to their own audio channels, which can be viewed and edited in the MIX tab. The PLAY tab provides access to the parameters that are useful for live playing.
The new Vienna Organ Player gives users a lot of flexibility and options. The Great Hall’s room tone (noise floor) can be dialed in separately, even with the Rieger Organ’s wind chest running idle. Users can choose between regular playing ranges of the manuals and the pedal, or have them mapped over an 88-key keyboard. “Tremulant” modifies the air supply, resulting in tremolo and slight vibrato. Users can add even more expressiveness to their performances by assigning “Swell” to all or only designated manuals, to recreate the effect of pipes being shuttered off in a swell box.
While being recorded with the ambience of the Great Hall of Vienna Konzerthaus, a host of masterfully crafted mixer presets are available to adapt the organ’s placement and reverberation to the sound of any project. Mixer Presets are available in the categories of Standard & Style (with presets such as Messiaen, Toccata & Fugue, Animated Fairytale, Pop Hymn), Concert Venues (including the various halls of Vienna Konzerthaus and The Sage Gateshead), Scoring Stages (Synchron Stage Vienna, Teldex Berlin, ORF Sendesaal), and Sacred Places (chapels and churches).