A HISTORICAL MOMENT

A new Concert Hall Organ for the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra (2017-2021)

As of January 2018 the Gothenburg International Organ Academy sealed a historic agreement to build a new concert hall organ for the Gothenburg Symphony Hall of the highest international dignity.

The commission to build the new organ was won by the Austrian organ building company Rieger Orgelbau.

A preliminary study was conducted under the auspices of organ professor Hans Davidsson, artistic director of the Gothenburg International Organ Academy (GIOA), commissioned by the owner of the Concert Hall, the real estate company Higab, in collaboration with the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra.

The Göteborg Concert Hall Organ Reference Group was formed, comprising members of the organizational bodies concerned as well as international experts in organ building. The reference group has, in dialogue with the project management, studied the various options for the concert hall organ, also seeking advice from experts in cultural heritage.

In this film You are invited to follow the process of planning, building and catering for the Göteborg Concert Hall Organ over a period of four years, spanning 2018-2021.

You will meet a group of extremely devoted organists, organ resarchers, project leaders and organ builders and follow their research towards creating a concert hall organ for the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, with a full, embracing and shimmering whole-length tonal palettein a very wide register, from the tenderest to the most powerful of expressive sonorities.

In 2021, the vision of the architect of the Gothenburg Concert Hall, Nils Einar Eriksson, who in the 1930s drafted the concert hall with an organ right next to the orchestra, will finally be realized.

The sound of an organ merging with the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra as one body, will be heard for the first time, ever.

Our heartfelt thanks to everyone involved in the wonderful process of giving birth to the Göteborg Concert Hall Organ in 2017–2021

We would like express our sincere gratitude to Higab and its presidents Stefan Lundqvist and Per-Henrik Hartmann, and the Göteborg Symphony Orchestra and its Artistic Director and President, Sten Cranner, for making it possible to build and install the new concert hall organ. Thank you for entrusting the Göteborg International Organ Academy with the leadership of the organ project and providing its international reference group with opportunities to assist in and follow the whole process. Special thanks to Wendelin Eberle and Rieger Orgelbau in Schwarzach for building a unique and wonderful organ.

Our warmest thanks also goes to the Göteborg Concert Hall Organ Reference Group:
Bine Bryndorf, Karin Nelson, Paul Peeters, Joris Verdin, Nathan J. Laube, Hans-Ola Ericsson, Koos van de Linde, Magnus Kjellson (GSO), Hans Davidsson, Chair and Project Leader