Organ recitals in S:t Jacob's Church

Friday 12th of June 2026 5 pm

Earth – the stars – the spirit

Program

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750)
    Fantasia and Fugue in C minor BWV 537

Håkan Sundin (b. 1961)
    Floating Island (2024)
      A still lake in the morning mist, a floating island moves slowly and imperceptibly.
      Nature slowly awakens to a new day …
    Earth Energy (2024)
      Earth, we listen, we hear you breathing, vibrating and teeming with life!

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) | organ arrangement Agneta Sköld (b. 1947)
    Nu grönskar det from the Peasant Cantata BWV 212

Indra Riše (b. 1961)
    from the cycle Natura siderum (2023)
      Šūpolēs / On the Swing
      Kalnā kāpējs / Mountain Climber
      Kronēšana / Coronation

Elfrida Andrée (1841–1929)
    Prelude in B-flat major
    Fuga con spirito

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750)
    Fantasia super Komm, Heiliger Geist BWV 651

Programme notes

Among all musical instruments, there are few – if any – whose repertoire is so completely dominated by a single composer as that of the organ, and that composer is Johann Sebastian Bach. His organ works have, for centuries, served as the very yardstick of what organ music can be: earlier composers have been viewed as those who “paved the way” for Bach, later ones as heirs and followers in his footsteps. The late-Romantic organ master Max Reger expressed this special status in drastic terms when he claimed that music history begins and ends with Bach.

Even today he maintains his hold on organists. In Bach’s organ music one finds, in concentrated form, everything an organist could wish for: an almost complete exploration of the instrument’s sonic possibilities, an exceptional fusion of technical virtuosity, polyphonic refinement, and profound musical expressiveness. No other organ repertoire is so precisely tailored to the instrument – and few place equally high demands on technique, sensitivity, and musical imagination. Bach thus still appears as the unsurpassed giant of organ music, whose works form an inexhaustible source for both performers and listeners.

The opening Fantasia and Fugue in C minor BWV 537 can in fact be seen as a kind of prelude to the entire Passion season. The fantasia begins with a long pedal point while the hands weave an imitative texture in which a small rising sixth is the dominant interval – perhaps the most tragic-sounding of all intervals. After a few bars a second main motif appears, a sighing figure, the so‑called suspiratio, traditionally associated with suffering. The texture grows increasingly animated and eventually leads to a half cadence. The fugue subject also centres on the small sixth, preceded by a bar of repeated notes and followed by a descending broken diminished‑seventh chord. The fugue is in three sections; the middle section presents a new, even more tragic theme, built on rising chromaticism entwined with circling motions. This must be regarded as the expressive climax of the fugue, and when the main subject returns it is perceived almost as a relaxation. The tragic character is underlined right up to the final chord, which remains in the minor mode instead of resolving, as usual, into the major. The work was probably written during Bach’s Weimar period.

Håkan Sundin is a composer, flautist and church musician with roots in Östhammar. After studies in jazz and music theory at Skurup Folk High School (1980–82), he did his military service with the music platoon in Strängnäs and then continued at the Academy of Music in Malmö, where he studied flute with Bertil Melander and Anders Ljungar-Chapelon and composition with Sven-Eric Johansson, Jan W. Morthenson and Hans Gefors, graduating in 1988. He has also studied privately with Manuela Wiesler and pursued further composition studies with Per Nørgård in Aarhus. As a freelancer he has deputised with the symphony orchestras of Helsingborg and Malmö, worked as a woodwind teacher and wind‑band conductor in Norway, and as ensemble and woodwind teacher in several municipal music schools in Uppland.

Sundin is active both as a classical flautist and as a jazz musician, and has performed in a number of countries. Together with the organist Ligita Sneibe he forms an established duo that has toured in Sweden and abroad, and for which composers from Sweden, Latvia and Poland have written new works. As a professional composer and member of the Society of Swedish Composers (FST), he writes for both large and small ensembles as well as for choir, and his music has been performed in the Nordic countries, the Baltic region, Central Europe, the United Kingdom and the USA. After further training as an organist at Geijerskolan (2010–12) he has been working as a church musician in the Öregrund–Gräsö parish in Roslagen’s northern pastorate.

The two organ works Floating Island (2024) and Earth Energy (2024) belong to his more recent compositions for the instrument, both written in close collaboration with Ligita Sneibe. Their titles suggest two poles of expression: in Floating Island one can imagine a floating, almost improvisatory movement over slowly shifting sound fields, while Earth Energy points towards a more earth‑bound character, driven by rhythmic and harmonic pulsation. Although newly composed, the works clearly reflect Sundin’s dual background as both jazz musician and classically trained composer, in which a strong melodic sense and a fine ear for harmonic colour shape his writing for the large organ’s palette.

Johann Sebastian Bach’s Nu grönskar det (“Now the Green Blade Rises”) has its origins in a very different setting from the Swedish summer idyll with which we now associate the song. The melody is taken from the secular Peasant Cantata, Mer hahn en neue Oberkeet BWV 212, which Bach wrote in 1742 for a festivity at an estate in Saxony. The cantata is a burlesque homage to the landowner and to beer, with a light, dance‑like character far removed from the liturgy of the church.

It is the second movement of this cantata that later gained new life in Sweden through Evelyn Lindström’s 1933 text “Nu grönskar det i dalens famn”. With these Swedish words Bach’s music is transformed into a bright spring and summer song in which the greening of nature, light and joy in life take centre stage. Thus a satirical rustic cantata from 18th‑century Germany has become one of the most beloved spring songs in the Swedish tradition, frequently sung today by choirs and congregations alike.

When the organ’s sound opens towards something both earthly and cosmic, we find a landscape in which Indra Riše moves with great naturalness. Her recent work on the large‑scale organ cycle Natura Siderum for “Organ+” shows how she lets the instrument become a principal voice for the worlds of nature and the stars in her musical imagination.

Indra Riše grew up in the small Latvian town of Dobele, surrounded by forests, meadows and rural landscapes. Childhood walks with her mother in nature and summers spent on a farm in Durbe near Liepāja have, by her own account, been decisive for the way she thinks about music: plants, birds, animals and their mutual balance run like a thread through both her life and her composing.

She first trained as a pianist at the Jāzeps Vītols Latvian State Conservatory and then as a composer at the same institution under Pēteris Plakidis. Further composition studies followed at the Royal Danish Academy of Music with Nils Rosing‑Schow, as well as in electroacoustic composition, and she has complemented this with courses in electronic music at, among others, the University of California, Berkeley, and at IRCAM in Paris. Her interest in the laws of nature and humankind’s place in the cosmos also led her to studies at the Baltic School of Astrology.

In 2021 Riše embarked on a professional doctoral programme at the Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music, with the cycle Natura Siderum for organ and “Organ+” as its artistic focus, and in 2025 she was awarded the degree of Doctor of Arts. This project places the organ firmly at the centre of her recent creative work.

As a composer she moves between choral music, chamber music, electroacoustic works and symphonic repertoire, but she has built up a particularly substantial catalogue of chamber and organ music, much of which has been recorded. Among her albums is Trumpets of Angels, in which the organ emerges as a sonic and spiritual centre. In her organ music, experiences of nature, inner imagery and contemporary sound imagination come together in a personal, finely tuned musical language.

The cycle Natura siderum – “The Nature of the Stars” – is a large‑scale work for organ with various solo instruments, inspired by human psychological characteristics and encompassing the entire circle of the zodiac. A specific solo instrument (violin, trumpet, saxophone) is assigned to each sign, helping to characterise its particular qualities. The cycle then concludes with three movements for organ solo.

Šūpolēs / On the Swing portrays Libra (24 September–23 October), a cardinal air sign ruled by Venus. Libra symbolises relationships, balance and harmony, and thrives in an atmosphere of intellectual and spiritual activity. Libras can excel at creating equilibrium within the complex web of relationships that life brings, but at times they risk losing their own inner balance precisely because of this balancing act.

Kalnā kāpējs / Mountain Climber represents Capricorn (22 December–20 January), a cardinal earth sign ruled by Saturn. People born under Capricorn are marked by remarkable determination and resilience in the face of life’s difficulties; there is virtually no task they cannot master.

Kronēšana / Coronation depicts Leo (23 July–22 August), a fixed fire sign ruled by the majestic Sun. The lion is a noble animal; its stately gait and courteous bearing towards others reveal the true king of beasts.

When a teenage Elfrida Andrée first climbed up to the organ in St Jacob’s Church in Stockholm, it was far from self‑evident that she would be allowed to play at all – women were considered unsuitable as organists. Yet it was precisely these studies at Gustaf Mankell’s organ in St Jacob that became a springboard to a historic examination and to a life’s work that changed Swedish music history.

Elfrida Andrée was born in 1841 in Visby into a politically liberal and culturally active family, where her father, the provincial physician Andreas Andrée, encouraged his daughters’ musical gifts. Early studies with the cathedral organist in Visby were followed by a move to Stockholm. There, in a milieu shaped by the concerts of Musikaliska sällskapet and an increasingly lively musical life, she deepened her organ studies with Gustaf Mankell at St Jacob’s organ and, in 1857, became the first woman in Sweden to pass the organist’s examination. The path to an actual organ post, however, remained closed: she was not even permitted to apply, solely because of her sex.

Together with her father she then pursued the matter politically. After debate in the Swedish parliament and a change in the law she was, in 1861, appointed organist of the Finnish Church in Stockholm – probably the first woman in Europe to hold a regular organist’s post. Thus the young organist from St Jacob’s gallery had broken through one of the era’s most tenacious barriers. A few years later, in 1867, she became cathedral organist in Gothenburg, a position she would hold for more than sixty years.

In parallel Andrée built up a significant career as composer, conductor and pedagogue. She wrote symphonies, chamber music, songs, organ works, two large Masses and the opera Fritiofs saga to a libretto by Selma Lagerlöf. She led choirs, introduced new international repertoire and organised people’s concerts at which she herself conducted the orchestra – yet another area in which she was the first woman in Sweden.

Elfrida Andrée was also deeply engaged in the women’s movement. Her cantata for the 1911 World Congress for Women’s Suffrage in Stockholm became a musical manifesto for the struggle for political and social influence. When she died in 1929 she had inscribed herself not only as one of the most important figures in Swedish musical life, but also as a symbolic figure for women’s rights to education, professional life and artistic voice.

Sex småstycken (“Six Short Pieces”) is a collection of organ pieces that Andrée composed during a stay in Grefsen on the northern outskirts of Oslo, an area known for its water‑cure establishment. The order of the pieces is her own, while the collective title was added only in modern times.

In these brief works Andrée leaves the chorale‑based idiom behind and moves freely with her own motivic material, fluid melodic writing and touches of expressive chromaticism. The Prelude in B‑flat, heard in this concert, is a clear example: here she displays her fondness for chromaticism and shapes a singing cantilena for solo trumpet stop in the organ, the melodic line carried by rich, colour‑sensitive harmony.

Fuga con spirito in E‑flat major treats the fugue genre’s conventions in a free manner, with elegant, partly Baroque‑inspired gesture and articulation. The music exists in several versions, one with simpler registration within her second sonata, while the version performed here exploits a wider dynamic range through additional stops and echo effects between the manuals. The final echo effect can be compared with a similar idea at the end of the finale of her B‑minor organ symphony.

The large collection of the 18 so‑called Leipzig Chorales opens with a magnificent depiction of the miracle of the first Pentecost Day in Komm, heiliger Geist, Herre Gott BWV 651. This hymn was the principal Pentecost chorale and often opened the service on Pentecost Sunday. In Bach’s setting the chorale melody appears in the pedals, while the manuals carry a highly animated texture whose main motif, built on the first phrase of the chorale, is shaped to resemble flickering tongues of fire. The earlier Weimar version was considerably shorter, with only 48 bars; in the Leipzig version it is expanded to 106 bars – the most extensive reworking in the entire collection. In the penultimate bar Bach signs the piece with the notes B‑A‑C‑H, a musical “calling card” that appears again in several other chorales in the set.