Jean Sibelius (1865 - 1957) Violin Concerto in D Minor, Op. 47 Johan Svendsen (1840 - 1911) Romance Op. 26 Johan Halvorsen (1864 - 1935) Danses norvegiennes...
Jean Sibelius (1865 - 1957)
Violin Concerto in D Minor, Op. 47
Johan Svendsen (1840 - 1911)
Romance Op. 26
Johan Halvorsen (1864 - 1935)
Danses norvegiennes
Christian Sinding (1856 - 1941)
Legende Op. 46
Johan Halvorsen
Air norvegienne, Op. 7
The Finnish composer Jean Sibelius was
born in 1865, the son of a doctor. The language and culture of his family was
Swedish, but Sibelius himself was to enter wholeheartedly into the world of
Finland, with its different linguistic and literary traditions. It was this
world that he translated into musical terms in his remarkable seven symphonies
and in a series of tone poems that echo the ancient saga's. He was trained as a
musician at first in Helsinki, then in Berlin and Vienna, and had early
ambitions as a violinist, at a time when the first professional orchestra in
Finland was being established. Narrowly failing to win the position of
Professor of Music at the University of Helsinki in 1896, he was awarded a
government stipend for ten years, converted thereafter into a pension for life.
This was never enough to meet his needs, hardly tempered by a certain inherited
improvidence. His father had had a gift for extravagance, and had left his
family bankrupt at the time of his early death. For the last 27 years of his
long life Sibelius virtually ceased to work as a composer. His position was
unassailable, but he felt himself out of tune with the contemporary world of
music, as it had developed.
Sibelius completed the first version of
his Violin Concerto in 1903 and it was first performed in Helsinki with
indifferent results. The concerto was revised and successfully performed in
Berlin in 1905 by Karl Halir, under the direction of Richard Strauss. The
choice of soloist, however, offended the violinist Willy Burmester, who had
originally been promised the work. The earlier version of the concerto was
technically ambitious, and as a violinist Sibelius had needed no help with the
lay-out of the solo part, although this presented technical difficulties that
were beyond his own command. The later version made necessary revisions in the
solo part and it is in this definitive form that the work has become a standard
part of the solo repertoire.
The concerto opens with no lengthy
orchestral introduction, the soloist making an almost immediate appearance,
accompanied by a Scandinavian mist of muted strings. Although the movement is
in the traditional tripartite form, the central development section is replaced
by a cadenza-like passage for the violinist. The lyrical slow movement brings a
deeply romantic melody, the soloist proceeding to weave his own fantasies above
the orchestra. There follows a finale which the composer once described as a
danse macabre, providing an opportunity for virtuoso display in a work in which
the solo part is generally intertwined with the orchestral texture.
Johan Svendsen was born in Christiania,
the modern Oslo, in 1840, the son of an army musician. He was trained as a
violinist, although his family background led to his enrolment as a clarinettist
in an army band. Norway, ruled until 1814 by Denmark and under the continued
cultural influence of that country, was from 1814 under the domination of
Sweden until the dissolution of the union in 1905 and the accession of a Danish
prince as king. Svendsen's career coincided with that of Grieg, with whom he
was closely associated, as a composer, conductor and performer, in the growing
romantic nationalism that shaped the course of Norwegian music in the later
years of the nineteenth century. Like Grieg, he studied in Leipzig and
thereafter spent considerable periods abroad, finally settling in Copenhagen,
where he died in 1911. His lyrical Romance for violin and orchestra was written
in 1881 at a time when he was living in Christiania. It marked the virtual end
of his career as a composer. His later years were devoted primarily to
conducting. Here he had won considerable distinction and in 1883 was appointed
conductor of the Danish Royal Opera in Copenhagen, a position he occupied until
his retirement in 1908.
The Norwegian violinist Johan Halvorsen
was born in 1864 and studied at the Conservatory in Stockholm. He became leader
of the Bergen Orchestra in 1887 and later moved to Leipzig to study with Adolph
Brodsky, the violinist who gave the first performance of Tchaikovsky's Violin
Concerto, and was later to lead the Halle Orchestra and head the Royal
Manchester College of Music. Halvorsen's career took him to Aberdeen as an
orchestral leader and later to Berlin and to Liege for further study. He later
became conductor of the National Theatre in Christiania. His wife was a niece
of Grieg, a composer who exercised a strong influence over his compositions. In
addition to incidental music for the theatre and a well known pair of
arrangements of Handel for violin and viola, Halvorsen wrote a number of works
of direct Norwegian inspiration, including the Norwegian Dances of 1915.
He also transcribed music he heard played on the traditional Norwegian
hardanger fiddle, raw material used by Grieg.
Christian Sinding's reputation as a
composer has suffered unfairly through the excessive popularity of his piano
piece The Rustle of Spring. Born in 1856 at Kongsberg, he studied the
violin in Christiania, before moving, like a number of his Norwegian
compatriots, to Leipzig, where he turned from the violin to composition.
Influenced strongly by the neo-German school of Liszt and Wagner, he
established himself in Norway as a composer only second to Grieg. He wrote his
popular Legende for violin and orchestra in 1900, one of a number of such
compositions, in addition to his three Violin Concertos.
Dong-Suk Kang Hailed for his artistry,
virtuosity and charismatic presence on stage, the Korean violinist Dong-Suk
Kang enjoys an international career spanning performances with major
orchestras, at festivals and in solo recital. He first came to the attention of
the concertgoing public when he won both the San Francisco Symphony Competition
and the Merriweather Post Competition in Washington, D.C., and subsequently
went on to win top prizes in several international competitions, among them the
Montreal, the Carl Flesch in London and the Queen Elizabeth in Brussels.
Czechoslovak Radio Symphony Orchestra
(Bratislava) The Czechoslovak Radio Symphony Orchestra (Bratislava), the oldest
symphonic ensemble in Slovakia, was founded in 1929 at the instance of Milos
Ruppeldt and Oskar Nedbal, prominent personalities in the sphere of music. The
orchestra was first conducted by the Prague conductor Frantisek Dyk and in the
course of the past fifty years of its existence has worked under the batons of
several prominent Czech and Slovak conductors. Ondrej Lenard was appointed its
conductor in 1970 and in 1977 its conductor-in-chief. The orchestra has
recently given a number of successful concerts both at home and abroad, in West
and East Germany, Russia, Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Spain, Italy, and Great
Britain.
Adrian Leaper
Adrian Leaper studied conducting with
Maurice Miles at the Royal Academy of Music in London, where he was trained
also as a horn-player, later appearing with the London Sinfonietta and the
English Chamber Orchestra, as well as serving eight years in the Philharmonia
Orchestra, five of them as co-principal. At the same time he undertook a
variety of conducting engagements with amateur and professional orchestras, in
particular with the Cambridge Symphony Orchestra, of which he was appointed
Musical Director and Principal Conductor in 1982. He has more recently been
appointed to the new position of Assistant Conductor with the Halle Orchestra.
Adrian Leaper has appeared at a number of major festivals including Edinburgh,
Bonn, Bath, King's Lynn, Greenwich, Cambridge and Henley.