By Ulrike Granögger

Our Music of the Week is a celebration of organ building in the 21st century. Yes, you read that right: organs are still being built today. The Cathedral of Saint Joseph in Sioux Falls, South Dakota has just received its new and utterly magnificent organ, a masterwork of Juget-Sinclair organ builders from Montréal. The organ is lovingly named Opus 56 and is one of altogether three cathedral organs built this year.

Our music pick is a video in which organist Balint Karosi showcases all of the organ’s stops, pipes, and registers—an extended musical demonstration of this remarkable instrument and its great variety of sounds and tonal colors.

The new three-manual pipe organ of Saint Joseph Cathedral has an impressive 55 stops, 75 ranks, and 3,651 pipes. Its design brings together two important European organ-building traditions: the rich and voluptuous sound qualities of French organs of the 19th century and the clarity of the 18th-century German Baroque organs. The result is an instrument capable of producing a fantastically broad range of music, from delicate and flutelike sounds to powerful, majestic drones.

This is a superbly educational video that lets you hear the different registers both individually and in combination and reveals the great versatility of the organ.

Opus 56 is truly an achievement in modern-day organ building, with a beautifully crafted encasing that complements the architecture of the cathedral.

Solari will soon be publishing the adventures of the gifted Solari Builder, Maverick Maready, who is touring the most famous organs of the Netherlands. We recommend this week’s musical video as a learning and preparation experience to better appreciate his upcoming presentations.