Victoria Ulriksen

No single instrument can mesmerize like a large pipe organ, with sounds ranging from delicate tweeting to veritable musical tornadoes. For this concert, Norway’s fast-rising star of the instrument, Victoria Ulriksen – fresh from a major tour of the UK where she played recitals at Westminster Abbey and St Paul’s Cathedral – plays the renowned Rieger organ of Bergen Cathedral inaugurated in 1997.

Victoria’s recital ranges over four centuries, ranging from Bach’s time to her own. She begins with one of the baroque composer’s most spectacular experimental creations – the Sinfonia from his celebratory Town Hall Election Cantata that Bach imagined almost as an organ concerto in miniature, heard in an arrangement by Marcel Dupré. It is followed by Martin Schmeding’s arrangement of Bach’s thrilling harpsichord transcription of Vivaldi’s Concerto for Four Violins.

To end, we hear movements from Olivier Messiaen’s seminal series of organ works celebrating the birth of Christ, La Nativité du Seigneur, including the ecstatic fanfares of ‘Les enfants de Dieu’ and the rip-roaring toccata of ‘Dieu parmi nous’. In between comes the touching Cantilena by the pioneering first female organist of Gothenburg Cathedral, Elfrida Andrée, Saint-Saëns’ devilish Danse macabre and a work dedicated to Ulriksen by her teacher, Organist of Oslo Cathedral, Kåre Nordstoga.

Image on top: Victoria Ulriksen. Photo: Levent Ultanur

Supported by

Contributors

• Victoria Ulriksen organ

Works

• Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) 
  From Cantata: Wir danken dir, Gott, wir danken dir, BWV 29 
  1. Sinfonia, arr. Marcel Dupré 
  Concerto for 4 Harpsichords in A Minor, BWV 1065 based on Antonio Vivaldi’s op. 3, arr. Martin Schmeding
  1. Allegro
  2. Largo
  3. Allegro 

• Elfrida Andrée (1841–1929)
  Cantilena 

• Kåre Nordstoga (1954–) 
  Sharing (composed for Victoria Ulriksen) 

• Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921)
  Danse Macabre, op. 40, arr. Edwin Lemare 

• Olivier Messiaen (1908–1992) 
  From La Nativité du Seigneur 
  6. Les Anges 
  5. Les Enfants de Dieu 
  9. Dieu parmi nous