Harald Rise - Gaudeamus (2012)

On this CD from LAWO Classics, the organist Harald Rise, Professor of Church Music at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim performs most of the organ works of composer Kjell Habbestad, which were written during the period 1976-2007. The compositions include works commissioned for the dedication of new organs, works dedicated to performers, and works composed in honor of other composers. The largest composition is a grandly conceived Introduction & Passacaglia based on themes of Norwegian composer Fartein Valen. Other works include an organ suite, some organ chorales, even wedding music, from a composer whose compositional and technical repertoire is very extensive.

In the liner notes, Olaf Eggestad depicts the composer as a rhetorician and suggests that an affinity for the textual seems to be characteristic of Habbestad’s approach to composition. With respect to form and musical vocabulary the composer is moderate, with a common denominator of tonal centering. But the tonality is bent, twisted and stretched, and its identity is under attack. Habbestad loves the organ’s luxuriant sound, its overpowering sensuality, the uninhibited way in which it fills and dominates the space around it. He is also inclusive in the manner of Baroque composers; he likes to lard his pieces with musical citations and historical allusions. Melodies from the instrumental music of the Middle Ages as well as pre-Gregorian and Gregorian song are commented on musically from a modern standpoint even as the composer exhibits the historical traditions.

Harald Rise has toured in Europe, the USA and Canada as a soloist and as an accompanist and has given many organ concerts on Norwegian National Radio and TV. He has released 9 solo organ CD’s and has collaborated in several others. Also active as a musicologist, Rise has published articles on church music and other musicological topics. In 2002 he was awarded a doctorate upon completion of a dissertation dealing with the organ works of Maurice Duruflé (1902-1986)