Nordland Musikkfestuke: Baumgartner, Tjøgersen and Bartok in Bodø
NO / EN
When the ensemble returns to Bodø and Musikkfestuka in August 2025, we will do so together with the winner of the European Young Musician, Leonard Baumgartner. Together we will perform Joseph Haydn's concerto for violin and orchestra in C major.
The program also includes a performance by the Norwegian composer Kristine Tjøgersen. She has been inspired by the name of the scent of rain when it falls on dry ground, namely the Greek "petrichor".
Kristine Tjøgersen is among our most promising composers, as the only Norwegian recipient of the prestigious Ernst von Siemens Prize, which was awarded on May 17th this year. Previous prize winners include Benjamin Britten, Olivier Messiaen, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Leonard Bernstein, and this year the prize will also be awarded to the conductor legend Sir Simon Rattle.
Tjøgersen has also just had a work premiered by the Kronos Quartet in a sold-out Carnegie Hall. The Bodø audience may also remember her tribute to life in the sea through the work ‘Pelagic Dreamscape’ which was commissioned by the Arctic Philharmonic and performed in Stormen in April 2024.
Her new work for strings is thus inspired by scent, and in particular the scent of rain, Petrichor. The human nose is particularly sensitive to this scent, which for most people will be easily recognizable. In the same way, the work’s soundscape will probably offer recognizable expressions with strong inspiration from nature.
Bartok’s Divertimento for strings is full of contrasts: The form is borrowed from the Baroque Concerto Grosso, with constant alternations between solo parts and large group sound – while the energetic expression has clear origins in Hungarian folk music with its playful outbursts, large dynamic leaps and asymmetrical rhythms.
Divertimento is a term borrowed from the classical style, written to entertain both the audience and the performers, and has a light and cheerful character. However, in Bartok's work, the polished, classical upper-class expression is challenged with his peasant folk music inspiration, and he himself is said to have stated the following:
"Since I have a taste for dissonances, I want to invade this notion of terrible neatness and order, dressed in a summer shirt without collar and cuffs, and in my most worn-out shoes – just to shock them".
The work was written in the summer of 1939, a time of great unrest in Europe. Only weeks after it was completed, Bartok had to flee Hungary due to the start of World War II. He lived the rest of his life in exile in New York. The work's second movement has a darker expression, which perhaps reflects some of this and again creates a great contrast to the lively outer movements, which serve the divertimento's original purpose: to delight and entertain the audience.
