Before and After

Description

Discover Before and After, the new album by Swedish organist Johannes Skoog, winner of First Prize and the Gérard-Coulombe Bach Prize at the 2024 International Organ Competition of Canada. Recorded on the magnificent Létourneau organ at the Francis Winspear Centre for Music in Edmonton, the album brings together works by Bach, Mehldau, Alain, Unander-Scharin, Howells, Nyman, and Duruflé, all centered on a single theme: how composers draw upon the legacy of their predecessors to transform and extend it. This release marks the sixth collaboration between ATMA Classique and the Canadian International Organ Competition (CIOC), continuing a partnership dedicated to showcasing the competition’s prize winning organists.

Considered one of Sweden’s most promising young organists, Johannes Skoog has enjoyed a remarkable rise to international prominence. Following his success at the International Organ Competition of Canada in 2024, he was appointed organist to the Royal Court of Sweden, a position he has held since April 2025. He has performed at venues including Bozar in Brussels, Notre-Dame de Paris, and Stockholm City Hall.

With Before and After, Skoog weaves a true musical dialogue across the centuries. Bach’s Prelude in C-sharp Major opens the program before finding a contemporary echo in Brad Mehldau’s After Bach: Rondo, presented here in a transcription for organ by Skoog and recorded for the first time.

This theme of transmission runs throughout the album: Jehan Alain revisits a theme attributed to Clément Janequin, Herbert Howells pays homage to Thomas Tallis, while Maurice Duruflé celebrates Alain’s memory in his powerful Prelude and Fugue on the Name of ALAIN. Two excerpts from Carl Unander-Scharin’s Suite Processionis a work commissioned in 2020 by Skoog, among othersas well as Michael Nyman’s Fourths, Mostly round out this journey between tradition and modernity. Recorded in January 2026 on the Létourneau Opus 50 organ—a monumental instrument with 6,551 pipes—Before and After reveals the full range of Johannes Skoog’s playing and tonal palette. It is an album in which the history of the organ is not merely revisited, but continually reinvented