Norwegian Critics’ price to Ensemble Allegria

NO / EN

(The article is copied from solistkoret.no)

Singers Ingeborg Dalheim and Mari Askvik received the award with the director of the Solist Choir, Ingvild Skaatan. Photo: Sigrid Traasdahl / The Norwegian Soloist Choir

The soloist choir today received the Critics' Prize for music for 2020/2021 and 2021/2022, together with Ensemble Allegria, conductor Grete Pedersen and composer Bent Sørensen.

The prize was awarded for the performance of Bent Sørensen's Matthew Passion in Oslo Cathedral during the Oslo International Church Music Festival on 27 March this year.

The Critics Award is awarded by the Norwegian Critics Association and honors an outstanding, living artistic achievement, chosen by the country's collective critics. Four prizes are awarded annually: One for theatre, one for music and one for dance.

Matteuspasion was commissioned by the Church Music Festival on the occasion of the festival's 20th anniversary in 2020. The work has also been recorded on a disc which will be released in spring 2023 on BIS Records.

From the performance of the work during the Church Music Festival 2022. Photo: Anders Lillebo / Church Music Festival

Excerpts from talent held at the award ceremony:

By Aksel Dalmo Tollåli

Grete Pedersen, artistic director of the Norwegian Soloists' Choir and conductor under Sørensen's Matteuspasjon, last received the Music Critics Award in 2010. It was also for her work with the Soloists' Choir and for a concert during the Church Music Festival. In her time as artistic director, she has raised the Soloist Choir to a top international ensemble. Across stylistic eras, they sing with enormous expressiveness and musical intensity, and are today, more than ever, at the forefront of Norwegian choral singing. Mention must also be made here of the four soloists during the Matthew Passion, all drawn from the ranks of the Soloist Choir: Ditte Marie Bræin, Mari Askvik, Øystein Stensheim and Halvor Festervoll Melien. Ensemble Allegria has also distinguished itself as one of Norway's most exciting chamber orchestras, especially through its collaborations with the Soloist Choir. The ensemble, under the artistic direction of Maria Angelika Carlsen, shows an enormous breadth and flexibility in its repertoire and in its approach to it.

Sørensen's passion, like so much of his music, speaks in unison. The music has a transparency about it, as if it is shining through from several sides at the same time. Although the passion is filled with pain, it is not a pain that is shouted out, but expressed with a low, introspective intensity. Equally, there is also a beauty in the music, and that is also why the work makes such a strong impression: Both with choir and orchestra, suffering is transformed into something painfully beautiful.

Bent Sørensen was present for the performance of Matthew's Passion in Oslo Cathedral. Photo: Anders Lillebo / Church Music Festival

The soloist choir, Ensemble Allegria and conductor Grete Pedersen have worked closely together for a number of years. Together, they have honed a distinctive harmony between string players and singers, which i.a. is expressed in their recordings of Bach's motets which were awarded the prestigious French prize Diapason d'Or l'Année. They have also been awarded the Spellemannprisen.