A Quiet Beauty - Works By Kvandal

KVANDAL AND THE CHURCH There was a time in Norway when the position of organist was one of the most natural points of departure for a career as a professional musician. If one was interested in composing or writing texts about music, the post of church musician was a secure profession. Edvard Grieg had plans to become an organist while he was betrothed to his Nina in the 1860s. Church composers such as Knut Nystedt, Conrad Baden and Egil Hovland were organists, but also Klaus Egge and Edvard Fliflet Braen received a comparable education. Arne Nordheim studied to be a church musician at the same time as Johan Kvandal, who graduated in 1951. Although he was also a music critic, and a highly respected one, he held on to his post as church musician. Most of the works on this album were composed between 1959?1974 "Fantasi for orgel" (Fantasy for Organ) is one of his very last works, composed three years before his death. It is a finale worthy of this towering church composer. Kvandal used religious texts regularly, also in church music not found on this recording. He said in an interview after listening to Wagner's Ring: "It became a kind of closing of the ring in me. Quite simply put, at this time I rediscovered my childhood faith and the wonder I felt at the forces in play governing our lives."