Five Short Pieces (2023)
(A Movable Concerto for Positive Organ and Strings)

If, when listening to this piece, you seem to detect a vague whiff of Georg Friedrich Handel wafting through the air, you're not mistaken.

In the late 1950s and early 60s I was a member of the Copenhagen Boys Choir, filling out the ranks among the altos. What I remember most vividly was, when we performed Händel´s Oratorio Saul. It wasn't so much the mighty oratorio itself that consumed me with awe, rather it was the organ concerto performed right after the intermission (or was it before?), following a tradition where Händel himself entertained during performances of his oratorios, sitting at a small, one-keyboard movable organ, a so-called positive.

Now, the Boys Choir days are long gone, well over sixty years in the past, but for some reason I have, on and off during my life as a composer, nurtured a secret wish to write a not too opulent, short and hopefully entertaining composition for positive organ and a modest sized string orchestra (I am a trained organist, after all). So when Peter Navarro-Alonso, organist and choir master at the big baroque Copenhagen Church Vor Frelsers Kirke (ie. Our Savior's Church) asked me, if I'd like to write something, anything, to be performed at his church, I thought “…here we go, finally, a composition for small organ and strings!”

Five Short Pieces – a Movable Concerto for Positive Organ and Strings.

The Handel connection plays on two levels: the instrumental combination itself – and (especially in the first movement), the short quotations (slightly doctored) from one or two of the old master's own concertos (and he wrote a lot!). At some point, also in the first movement, you'll hear a passage that sounds like a Dutch street organ… and it's absolutely true! It's not due to the orchestra librarian having placed a wrong set of parts on the music stands… The Movable Concerto was premiered at Vor Frelsers Kirke on 20 September 2024. Peter Navarro-Alonso at the organ positive and members of The Danish National Symphony Orchestra string section, led by concert master Christine Åstrand.

- Poul Ruders (2025)