The Wager

Organ Treasures is like a small concert also for those who prefers melodic, soft and cosy organ music, but who never earlier "dared" to buy an organ recording, while so much organ music can be both difficult and complex. Featuring works by J.S. Bach, Charles Ives, Gabriel Pierné, Charles-Marie Widor, Sigfrid Karg-Elert, and César Franck.

If you are wondering what prompted an organist and a percusion/marimba/vibraphone player to journey to Iceland to make a recording with improvised music and a special arrangement of Maurice Ravel´s Bolero, then perhaps the word inspiration could be the most succinct answer. It is this which gives rise to the expression "inspired performance" which can certainly be applied to this recording.

Hymne a l'univers is an album on Opus 3 Records from acclaimed organist Mattias Wager, whose previous release on Opus 3 Records was the best-selling album entitled Organ Treasures. The Stockholm City Hall is known around the world for housing the Nobel prize banquet. It is also home to the largest organ in Scandinavia. On this spectacular instrument, with its 10,400 pipes, Mattias Wager plays French music from the Thirties. The music, by Alain, Jolivet, Bonnal and Duruflé shows the scope and sheer creativity of its time, and its feeling of boundless musical possibilities. With its wealth of sound, the Stockholm City Hall organ is one of the few instruments that make it possible to really bring out all the colors in this repertoire. Additionally this is the first real recording of this organ, even though it was built in 1926, 3 years after the Stockholm City Hall was opened to the public.

Arthurian tales have captured the imaginations of artists for centuries. In the late 12th-century, the floodgates of Medieval Arthurian literature burst open, and across Western Europe, works about the fictional deeds of individual knights of the Round Table were written. These were tales of mistaken identity, switched births, giants, ceremonial duels, and forbidden love, that portrayed the different knights as flawed upholders of what came to be known as the Chivalric Code.