In the second concert of the season, there will be the Oslo premiere of the work Høgsongen by Nils Henrik Asheim, which we will perform together with actress Petronella Barker in Kulturkirken Jakob.
This work was commissioned by Ensemble Allegria for the Festivals in Bergen in 2015, and the text is taken from Solomon's Song of Songs in the Bible. The piece was recorded at LAWO Classics a few years ago, but has never been performed in Oslo before!
Asheim's work is framed by music from the great 17th-century violin virtuoso Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber. Among his most prized works are the 15 Rosenkrantz Sonatas, or Mystery Sonatas, each of which refers to key events in the story of the Virgin Mary and Christ. At the concert we will hear the finale of this cycle: Passacaglia for solo violin, performed by the orchestra's artistic director, Maria Angelika Carlsen.
The concert ends with Biber's very last work: Harmonia Artificiosa-ariosa.
PROGRAM
Nils Henrik Asheim: The High Song
Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber: Passacaglia and Harmonia Artificioso-ariosa
SONG OF SOLOMON
Høysangen - The Song of Songs is a collection of love poems in which it is told about Solomon, a shepherd and a woman from Sjunem. The Song of Songs is unique in the Hebrew Bible: it neither devotes any interest to Yahweh, God's laws, nor the covenant between the Israelites and their God, nor does it contain teachings or words of wisdom. Instead, it celebrates physical love, and gives voice to two lovers who appreciate each other, yearn for each other, and want to create pleasure for each other.
Petronella Barker
Petronella Barker is from Colchester and Fredrikstad and educated at the Statens teaterhøgskole.
Petronella is a permanent employee at the National Theater in Oslo, and has played a wide range of roles there, including Cathleen in Long Day's Journey to Night, Natalja in Three Sisters, The Daughter-in-Law in Winter Custody, Mrs. Sørby in Wild Danden, Tekla in Creditors, Hedda in Hedda Gabler, Anden i Markens grøde, Leone in Neger og hunde kombat and Rebekka West in Rosmersholm – a role for which she received a Hedda Award nomination, Hippolyta/Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hermiane in The Dispute, The Flying Child, The Wife in the Overturned Angel, Sonnets, The Witch in Journey to the Poinsettia, Donna Elvira in Don Juan, Timmy in The Story of a Marriage, Joy Killer in The Art of Asking, We Must Talk About Faust, Mrs. Capulet in Romeo and Juliet, Sheep Woman in the Fire and Ella Rentheim in John Gabriel Borkman.
At Oslo Nye Teater she played, among other things, Ofelia in Hamlet and Edvarda in Pan.
Petronella has also played Agnes in Brand at Gothenburg's Stadsteater and Genia in De stora vidderna at Dramaten in Stockholm. She has for periods been employed at Stockholm's Stadsteater and, among other things, played Rita in Lille Eyolf, Countess Orsina in Emilia Galotti, Sonhustrun in Leka med elden, Jelena in Onkel Vanja, Merteuil in Kvartett and Gellhorn in Gellhorn och Hemingway.
Recently, she played Jelena in Onkel Vanja at Den Nationale Scene in Bergen, and Ljubov Ranjevskaja in Kirsebærhaven at Kilden in Kristiansand.
Petronella has also appeared in several films and TV series such as Sweetwater, Thrane's method, Hawaii/Oslo, Den bryosme mannen, for which she received an Amanda Award nomination, Victoria, Svenskjævel, Codename Hunter, Neste Sommer, Förstgangsjenesten and Gutta på Skauen.
Nils Henrik Asheim
Nils Henrik Asheim (b.1960 in Oslo) combines his careers as organist, pianist and composer with a business as a curator, program creator and initiator of artistic collaborations. His activity started in classical music and has later branched out into the free improvisation environment.
Asheim's music has a clear focus on timbre and on the physical and tactile side of sound. The music is often made up of several parallel time proportions, and Asheim works with layers of closeness and distance. Regularly recurring material is varied, creating a form that seems open and self-generating.
Asheim has developed his own personal improvisational style on the organ and cultivates a profile that opens up genre boundaries. He has twice received the Spellemann Prize (the Norwegian "Grammy"): for the organ record "19.03.04, Oslo Cathedral" and for "Mazurka - remaking Chopin."
Since 2012, Nils Henrik Asheim has been employed as an organist in Stavanger Concert Hall. Here he has created a large audience for the organ by developing new concert forms in which the organ i.a. combined with other instruments and art forms. Here we can mention the concepts Orgelnatt, Orgelets Ønskekonsert and the Orgelkraft festival, and not least the gigantic happening "Messiaen Complete" in November 2018 (nominated for the Kritikerprisen), where the entire concert hall was used for a nine-hour all-encompassing aesthetic, sensory and bodily experience.
In 2018, he received the Nordic Council's music prize for "Muohta - language of snow". In the same year, he was appointed a knight of the Royal Order of St. Olav for his efforts in Norwegian music life. In addition to the Nordic Council's Music Prize, Asheim has, among other things, received the Music Publisher's Prize, the Critics' Prize for Music, the Lindeman Prize, the Arne Nordheim Composer's Prize and the Edvard Prize. The children's opera "Stormen", commissioned by the Norwegian Opera and Ballet, won the European RESEO opera for young audiences award in 2014.