Ferraris and fiestas

I just had an experience akin to driving a Ferrari after a couple of years of trundling around in tatty old Fiestas. Not that I've ever driven a Ferrari, but can very much tick the tatty Fiesta/Astra/mini (*2)/Saab box. I got the chance to play through my undergraduate exam repertoire on the Cathedral organ here in Kuopio, for the weekly concert series, tomorrow. So I met with my teacher today to practise and do registrations. I normally practise on the small and quite often out of tune, somewhat tatty but serviceable two manual organs in school. Mostly they have 3 or 4 stops per manual. These are situated in small practise rooms, which means that they're incredibly loud (having been 'preserved' for posterity from old churches), and with such small rooms, it's very difficult to judge the touch, because of the complete lack of acoustic. So to spend 3 hours today on the TuomioKirkko organ, with 3 manuals, a really light even touch (mechanical, of course) about 50 stops (including the Subwoofer, a 32 ft. open metal that sits right beside you in the facade and sounds like a volcano!) and an excellent acoustic was like driving the above. It responds incredibly quickly, and grips the road like anything. Even driving it down to the shop was like WAYHEYYYY! It even feels car-like in that part of the organ is actually behind you, with the main section in front, so you feel like you're cocooned in it. The amazing thing was that I could suddenly hear all the inner parts in the pieces that I was playing properly, and control the attack with more precision, simply because the acoustic gives you such a feeling of time. I thought it would take time to get used to it, but it was incredibly easy to play, right from the word go. Even though there was quite a bewildering array of tone colours, it was also quite easy to register the pieces I'm playing, everything from Bach fugues to Hovland (v. modern) to Stanford and Stanley. I'm looking forward to tomorrow, but it will be a shame to have to go back to the school organs. The only positive thing is that if you can play well on them, then you'll play even better on the good ones!