Notes for: August 2, 2022
Although Johan Halvorsen never achieved the international prominence of his colleague and friend Edvard Grieg, he was an important and popular musical figure in Norway in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Halvorsen was a musician of many talents. He was a virtuoso violinist; a conductor who for 30 years headed Norway’s National Theater in Christiania (now Oslo); and an admired composer whose works ranged from scores for the theater (he wrote incidental music for more than 30 plays, from Shakespeare to works by Norwegian dramatists) to three symphonies, other compositions for orchestra, and many pieces for the violin.
Halvorsen made his violin debut in 1885 in Bergen, where he met and began his lifelong friendship with Grieg. Among their important collaborations was their role in creating a written record of Norwegian folk music. Halvorsen’s interest in this music was awakened in 1901 when, at Grieg’s request, he sat down with a folk fiddler named Knut Dale and wrote down the tunes Dale played for him. It was a challenge to transcribe the traditional folk style, with its intricate ornamentation. When Halvorsen had finished his violin transcriptions, Grieg re-transcribed the tunes for piano. Their violin and piano versions were then published simultaneously – an event that Grieg’s biographer John Horton called “a landmark in musicology comparable to Bartók’s early folk-music transcriptions, which they antedate by several years.”
In recent years, thanks to a flurry of new recordings of much of his music, Halvorsen has been rediscovered as a composer of colorful, beautifully crafted works. Several of his compositions have never gone out of popular favor, including Bergensiana, a set of variations for orchestra that is played each year at the opening ceremony of the Bergen International Music Festival. Among Halvorsen’s best-known works is this Passacaglia, a bravura adaptation of a movement from Handel’s Suite No. 7 in G Minor for Harpsichord. The Passacaglia begins sedately enough with Handel’s theme. Quickly, though, Halvorsen leaves Handel behind as the two instruments engage in a dazzling, fast-paced dialogue, replete with rapid runs, double stops, flamboyant gestures, and just about every technique in the string player’s repertoire. A showpiece that has been a crowd-pleaser ever since Halvorsen wrote it for a Bergen church concert, it’s a virtuosic romp that is as much fun to listen to as it is challenging to play.