Organ matinée with Richard McGovern

Through Konserthuset’s popular organ matinée subscription, audiences get to hear Sweden’s leading organists play the building’s organ – one of the largest in Europe, with 6,100 pipes. Here, Richard McGovern, organist at Eskilstuna parish, presents a programme dedicated primarily to British music. 

Among other things, we hear Herbert Howell’s beautiful Psalm Preludes Set 1. Howell was one of the most significant composers for organ in the twentieth century. Psalm Preludes Set 1 was composed as three tone poems, each of which was a comment on a verse from the book of Psalms. Many of the distinctive features that came to characterise Howell’s work are present in this music: a peaceful opening and a fiery, passionate climax that concludes in tranquillity.

The concert begins with the French nineteenth-century composer Léon Boëllmann’s best-known work, the striking Suite Gothique. Then we hear exclusively British music: Karl Jenkins’ rumbling Palladio, Carol Williams’ emotionally charged Twilight, and William Walton’s majestic Crown Imperial march.