Terje Tønnesen, the leader of the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra though its 27 year history, has allowed himself a new perspective on the most recorded music in the world.
A packed Uranienborg church experienced a version of Vivaldi’s Seasons beyond description – a performance starting in our own time and then whirling back to the composer’s own time – changing the perspectives totally. New cadenzas, tape-loops, samples, nokia, percussion, hurdy-gurdy, bagpipes… Terje Tønnesen’s version of the Seasons is a blast, and here he is in front of his Norwegian Chamber Orchestra in some incredible playing, recorded live in concert.
The Seasons as experienced in Oslo – not in Venice…
Of course the notion of 4 seasons means something quite different to habitants of the North than in the rest of the world. Temperatures vary from freezing -30 C and snow to + 30 C in our part of the world, and this is something you can feel yourself when listening to this recording. And maybe a Norwegian hangover is more powerful than an Italian one? What we know for certain is that when you call for the dogs to go hunting, they will come.
‘The best chamber orchestra in the world’ sets a new course
Leif Ove Andsnes uses the term when he describes his favourite: the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra. Under the wing of Iona Brown the NCO have made the world stop and listen. The NCO, with the combination of subtle nuance and Viking-like wildness, has set a world standard for what can be expected from a chamber orchestra today. With this recording of the Four Seasons the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra show that they are thinking refreshingly new and daring with regards to what it means to be a classical musician in the new millennium.
