Johan Svendsen: Music for strings – Risør Festival Strings

Svendsen complete works for string orchestra

Under the direction of Lars Erik Tomter, the Risør Festival Strings have made their mark internationally. At the 1993 Gidon Kremer chamber music festival in Lockenhaus they impressed the Vienna newspapers´ discerning music critics. The orchestra has previously presented Norwegian music in London with great success. On this album the ensemble also makes a considerable contribution to the dissemination of Norwegian music.

Hardly any other figure in Norwegian musical life has greater talent for commanding respect and admiration, combined with the warmest and deepest human appeal, among broad sections of the population. For many Johan Svendsen is the closest you can get to musical perfection in Norway. However, out there in the wide world of music, Svendsen stands today primarily as the composer of one single work, the Romance for Violin, which, besides Beethoven´s two Violin Romances, dares to be the finest and most performed work for violin and orchestra. Risør Festival Strings, together with violinist Henning Kraggerud, performs a fantastic version of this piece on this recording. But Svendsen also has a number of other significant works in his opus list, not least his String Octet, a milestone in all Nordic chamber music, his interpretations of Norwegian, Swedish and Icelandic folk music, or his orchestral arrangements of several Schumann miniatures, works that all received great critical acclaim in its time and is still relevant today, not least because of Risør String Festival´s great renditions of them on this album.