The life of an organist can sometimes be a very lonely one. Sure, there are services to play, and choir rehearsals to accompany, but besides that, there are hours and hours of practice, alone in a darkened church.

So when Sissel Sødal suggested that I play a duet with Tim Harry Blomberg, I jumped at the chance, even though I only got the music on Sunday night for the Tuesday concert, only a couple of days away. I was unfamiliar with the work that Tim Harry had chosen, Gustav Merkel’s “Sonata in D minor for four hands,” but when I saw the tempo marking as “Adagio,” I breathed a little easier. I played a bit of my assigned part, “Secondo,” on Sissel’s piano, even though there was an extensive pedal part.

Our first rehearsal on this was Monday afternoon, and we soon found ourselves getting tangled up, both our hands and our legs! For example, I would play a low B-flat for one quarter note, and the very next beat, Tim Harry would have to play it, meaning I would have to get off it fast without bumping into each other!

I am afraid there was a lot of “oh, sorry!” in our first run-through! But the more we played it, the more we could anticipate the other person’s moves. I was so happy when I realized that we were truly “on the same page!” Making music with Tim Harry was so easy—we felt the musical phrases in the same way.

In fact Tim Harry said that there was no one else in town who had the right combination of skills and experience — other organists here play pop music.

Here was the program:

I played:

Schmücke dich, o liebe Seele (BWV 654) -Bach

Komm, heiliger Geist (BWV 651a) -Bach

Then Tim Harry played:

Nimrod (Edward Elgar)

Till himmelen, dit längtar jag fra Sköldinge Sverige (folktune)

Aftonpsalm fra Skattungbyn Sverige (folktune)

Then we played the Merkel duet:

Tim Harry ended the program with two more works:

Choral, op. 37 (Joseph Jongen)

Toccata over “Store gud, vi lover deg (I. Kleive)

This last piece was a very flashy French toccata piece for which I turned pages.

What fun it was to play this program! We went home happy, and isn’t that the goal of every concert?!

Thank you, Sissel and Tim Harry, for giving me this opportunity to make music in Norway!