New website – new photos

It’s been a very, very long time since my last update of this website. Since the last update, I’ve become the organist of a second church, Fjærland church, and most important – I’ve become a proud father of a beautiful girl, who is now 15 months old.

When I was about to update this website, I sort off did a whole new website. You will not be able to comment any more, and I’m in the process of moving all my audio files to my SoundCloud account. They, and new ones, will still be playable directly from this website, though.

The biggest change for me is – brand new photos. My sister, who is a professional photographer, were given the task, and delivered some photos I’m really proud of! Please visit her website – she is a great photographer!

Recording from concert in Bergen cathedral

Friday october 3rd, I had a concert in Bergen cathedral, to celebrate my 30th birthday. The audience mostly consisted of my friends and family.

On the concert, this programme was performed:

Johann Sebastian Bach – Toccata & Fugue, d minor
Arvo Pärt – Trivium
Louis James-Alfred Lefébure-Wély – Sortie, Eb major
Maurice Duruflé – Méditation
Franz Liszt – Prelude & Fugue, B-A-C-H

In addition, I had an encore, which was my homage to my parents who October 5th celebrated their 40th anniversary as a married couple. For this, I played the recessional from their wedding:

Johann Sebastian Bach – Prelude, Eb major

The recording from this concert is available through my SoundCloud profile:
https://soundcloud.com/hallgeir-gaard/sets/concert-bergen-cathedral

New video on YouTube

It’s been a while since I uploaded this video to my YouTube-account, but now it’s also available through my website. This is a recording of Alexandre Guilmant’s Finale from his 5th Sonata, recorded in Bergen Cathedral, September 2013. I hope you will enjoy it.

You’ll find the video on the top of my “Videos”-page.

New videos uploaded

Last week, I played a concert in Bergen Cathedral. Videos from this concert is uploaded on YouTube. You can watch them directly from the “Video”-page.

Concert in Odense cathedral, Denmark

It’s an honor and a great pleasure for me to announce that this summer, I will give my first solo-concert abroad. I have been invited to Odense, Denmark to play a concert featuring both of the organs in Odense Cathedral. The concert will be in two parts; in the first part, I will be playing on the choir organ, and in the second part, I will be playing on the great organ.

The choir-organ was built by the Danish organbuilder Carsten Lund in 1998. It has 20 stops and is tempered after Schnitger in 1724, so it is a perfect organ for Bach, Buxtehude and other composers from the baroque-era and earlier eras.

The main-organ has it’s history from about 1752, when a Danish organbuilder named Amdie Worm, built an organ with 42 stops, a significant large organ at that time (for instance, the great organ in Marienkirche, Lübeck, had at that time an organ of about 50 stops. Now, the great organ of Marienkirche has 101 stops).
In 1862 another Danish organbuilder, Marcussen & Søn, built a new organ with 40 stops behind Worm’s beautiful organ-casing. In 1934, Marcussen & Søn, expanded the organ so it had 53 stops. In 1965 they did another expansion, so today the organ has 57 stops. The organ has also been equipped with 2.000 setzer-combinations, which makes it very easy to make very big changes in the sound of the organ.

The program for this concert is:

1st part (on the choir-organ):
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 – 1750): Piece d’Orgue, BWV 572

Dietrich Buxtehude (1637 – 1707): Vater Unser in Himmelreich, BuxWV 219

2nd part (on the main-organ):
Félix-Alexandre Guilmant (1837 – 1911): Sonata no. 5 pour Orgue, op. 80