Benny Andersson and the organ with 9000 pipes

March 31, 2013 4:06 PM

Benny Andersson & orgeln med 9000 pipor (58m, in Swedish, English, German, no subtitles that aren't from the Swedish TV source) presents the newly-built Organ Acusticum in the Studio Acusticum concert hall to Swedish television audiences. Performances include ABBA's Dancing Queen (with Benny on piano accompanied by the organ) and the premier of Benny's new composition specifically for this event En skrift i snön performed with Orsa Spelmän and choir. Lyrics can be found here (scroll down, Google Translate of lyrics).
posted by hippybear (3 comments total)

In case you felt like searching the Internet to find out if 9000 pipes is some kind of record: well, no. There are a couple of organs with approximately 30,000 pipes. I suppose we Bigger-is-Better Americans might be interested in this. Those of us who play or listen to music (that would be almost all of us) realize that quality matters one whole hell of a lot more than quantity when it come to music and musical instruments.

I mean, would the world's largest banjo be the world's best banjo (or worst, depending on your feelings about banjos)?

The narrator of this video speaks of this organ as having a wonderful "palette" of sounds, surely a better indicator of its beauty as an instrument. However, having the ABBA guy be the organist is probably not the greatest PR move, speaking for us musical snobs.
posted by kozad at 4:39 PM on March 31, 2013 [1 favorite]

I'm pretty sure that Benny is only featured at the organ keyboard on the very first piece in the video, but I might be wrong.
posted by hippybear at 4:55 PM on March 31, 2013

9000 pipes are only as good as the acoustics of the room in which they sound. But some of them best be very large, just for the thrill and awe.
posted by Goofyy at 3:24 AM on April 2, 2013