Henning Kraggerud

Norwegian violinist Henning Kraggerud is Artistic Director of the Arctic Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra. His extraordinary reach as an artist is a result of his versatility and passion for music, as well as the genuine quality to his playing and the beauty of his performances. His teaching and educational writings provide fascinating insights into his multi-faceted approach to music-making, while his composing, arranging and improvising – frequently bringing his own works into the concert hall – recall the spirit of the old masters such as Josef Suk and Eugène Ysaÿe.
Henning is a prolific composer whose works are performed by many prominent musicians and orchestras around the globe. His largest-scale work to date is entitled Equinox: 24 Postludes in All Keys for Violin and String Orchestra. Commissioned, premiered and recorded by the Arctic Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra with Henning as soloist, the work was composed as a musical counterpart to a story specially written by world-famous author Jostein Gaarder, and has been hailed as “a fascinating composition to return to over and over again” (MusicWeb International). Henning’s output as a composer also includes Preghiera, commissioned and performed by the Brodsky Quartet in 2012, and The Last Leaf, given its first performance in 2014 by the Britten Sinfonia, as well as cadenzas for two of Haydn’s cello concertos commissioned by Clemens Hagen in 2015 and Victimae Paschali for choir and orchestra commissioned by the Trondheim Chamber Music Festival. In 2017, the Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra commissioned and performed Topelius Variations for string orchestra, which Henning performed again later that year in an extensive national tour with the Australian Chamber Orchestra.

Henning’s eminence as a soloist and play/director have led to invitations time and again to many of the world’s most significant orchestras, most recently the Royal Danish Opera Orchestra, Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, Deutsche Kammerakademie Neuss, Toronto Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, Danish National Symphony, Tonkünstler Vienna, BBC Scottish Symphony, Tasmanian Symphony and Macao orchestras. In past seasons, Henning has performed twice at the BBC Proms in London’s Royal Albert Hall, as well as with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. Highlights of the current season include return visits to the Deutsche Kammerakademie Neuss am Rhein, Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra, Bergen Philharmonic and Poznan Philharmonic Orchestra.

Henning regularly performs on both violin and viola at major festivals and venues; recent collaborations have taken place at Wigmore Hall, King’s Place, Bruges Concertgebouw, Berlin Konzerthaus and Budapest’s kamara.hu festival, with artists such as Steven Isserlis, Joshua Bell, Lawrence Power, Leif Ove Andsnes, Håvard Gimse, Kathryn Stott, Natalie Clein, Christian Ihle Hadland, Christian Poltéra and Jeremy Menuhin.
Among Henning’s eclectic discography of 18 discs is a Naxos recording of Mozart Concertos Nos. 3, 4 and 5 with the Norwegian Chamber orchestra. The disc included Henning’s own cadenzas and was awarded an ECHO Klassik Award as well as chosen as Classic FM’s Album of the Week, NDR Kultur’s CD of the Week, Editor’s Choice in Classical Music Magazine, Recommended in The Strad, and featured on BBC Radio 3’s Record Review. On the Simax label, Henning’s most recent releases, both with the Arctic Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra, are Goldberg Variations + Topelius Variations, featuring Henning as violinist, composer and arranger, and Between the Seasons, a collaboration with world-famous author Erik Fosnes Hansen. Also for Simax, Henning has recorded the complete solo sonatas of Ysaÿe, on a disc which won the prestigious Spellemann CD award. On the ACT label, he released a disc entitled Last Spring which explored improvisations on Norwegian folk music with jazz pianist Bugge Wesseltoft.
Born in Oslo in 1973, Henning studied with Camilla Wicks and Emanuel Hurwitz. He is a recipient of the Grieg Prize, the Ole Bull Prize and the Sibelius Prize. Henning Kraggerud plays on a 1744 Guarneri del Gesù, provided by Dextra Musica AS. This company is a subsidiary of Sparebankstiftelsen DNB.

Sept 2019