My arrangement of a childhood favourite — a very strong resemblance to Pavarotti’s rendition, and not by coincidence: I arranged it by ear from that recording.

It may be that, as of 2025-09-19, there are no bass or baritone recordings of this piece on YouTube.

I had originally recorded a scaffolding track and some voice takes on 2025-07-31 — I had assumed that I would keep better tempo by not attempting to free-style the full organ part, and so wanted to have the organ recorded after voice — but after some thought decided it would be easier to trust my skill (risky), record the full organ part first, and only later layer the voice on top.

Facing the impending doom that is the end of my third decade, on 2025-09-19, I thought it would be good to just get it done after almost 2 months of procrastination. And so the voice part was recorded immediately after the organ — 3 takes (numbers 8, 9, and 10) at 11:30pm — and take 10 deemed acceptable. The organ part was done today in 6 takes: only takes 1 and 6 are complete recordings, and take 1 was just a run-through with some mistakes, so take 6 was inevitably the chosen one.

Registration

Sampleset: “Długa Kościelna” by Piotr Grabowski. I have in recent times really fallen in love with this sampleset: beautiful chiffs and bellow sounds; a minimal but well-specified set of pedal stops; plenty of flexibility in the 2 manuals to build from soft strings (viola di gamba on Manual 1, Gemshorn on Manual 2) and reeds (Krumhorn on Manual 2) to a beautiful chorus on Manual 1 and a bright-but-not-sour organo pleno with the manuals coupled.

A very simple registration:

• Pedals
  • Subbas 16'
  • Flet kryty 8'
  • Couple to Manual 1
• Manual 1 (accompaniment)
  • Flet kryty 8'
• Manual 2 (solo portions)
  • Flet otwarty 8'
  • Gemshorn 8'
  • (Szpicflet 2')

I do wonder if using the 2’ stop was a little too intense, but I love the sparkling nature of a gapped registration.