The Royal Festival Hall was infamous for having the driest sound of any concert hall ever anywhere. Musicians would enter it and instantly be de-hydrated. Bass notes would set off from the stage and fail to make it past Row H. It was just dandy for string quartets, folk singers, jazz bands, and electronic music, but nineteenth-century symphonies just shrivelled. (This sounds a lot like much modern hi-fi equipment, a lot of which is also fine for string quartets, folk singers, jazz bands, and electronic music, but gets confused by a 90-piece orchestra blasting out Bruckner.) The Hall was re-furbished in the Oughties, and the organ was re-furbished over a period of years, ending in 2013. There are larger organs in the world, but mostly in America and mostly for show. In practical terms, the Festival Hall organ is as good as it gets.
The range of this (and any other) organ is two octaves below middle C, and three octaves above. An 88-key piano goes a tenth below and another octave above. The lowest notes are just above the point where hi-fi speakers and the human ear start to roll-off on the bass, so there's no need for a sub-woofer, and that extra octave on the piano is mostly a plink sound. The organ has all the notes the human ear needs.
At first sight the layout of the pipes look like a mirror image. Look at this guide and especially pages 8-9, for the layout of the pipes. This is really four organs in one: a solo organ (top far right), a Swell organ (top far left), a Great organ on the rest of the left and upper near right, and a Positive organ on the rest of the right(*). There are four keyboards: Solo, Swell, Great and Positive, plus pedals for the bass notes.
As a result, if you are sitting in the equivalent of the Hi-Fi Sweet Spot, listening to the organ should feel stereo-ish - if the music is written to use the different sections one at a time. When the big pipes kick in, and the Swell gets going, it's just one vast splendid noise, and the sustained notes bounce off the diagonal reflecting boards at either side of the stage.
Some hi-fi reviewers talk about the way some gear will make the transients (that happen when a string is struck, for instance) clearer, and also make the way a note fades clearer. They are not listening to recordings of large organs when they hear those things. Live, there are no "transients" or "fades" when a large organ is even at half-steam. Subtlety is not a thing with big organs: go to recitals in small churches on one- or two-manual instruments for that.
It's also loud. I'm not going to be playing my Buxtehude or Messian CDs at that volume at home.
The organist was Iveta Apkalna. Organists can move all three of their hands and both their feet independently, and tap their head at the same time. They are not as other musicians, let alone as other mortals. There are no "bad" organists - it's one of those things that has to be done well or it can't be done at all.
She played a short piece by Philip Glass, an extract from the Musical Offering by Bach, and Widor's Fifth Symphony for Organ. All of it was enjoyable and fascinating, especially the more playful parts of the Widor (I know, not the adjective you were expecting for an organ symphony).
Maybe a couple of those Wilson tower speakers with a £150,000 pre-amp + monoblock set up could get something like the live sound. My kit won't. People forget that "classical" music can be VERY LOUD at times, way too loud to play with the neighbours in.
(*) I have no idea what those mean. There's a limit to how much research I'm prepared to do!
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