The Oslo Philharmonic - A Select Discography

An Index of ionarts Discographies

To accompany the news bit over on Forbes.com about Vasily "not-Kirill" Petrenko having renewed his contract as Chief Conductor with the Oslo Philharmonic, here a select discography of that band's best on record.

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Ionarts-at-Large: Poppycock in Oslo

You can’t blame the Oslo Opera that Tristan has only found its way into its program twice since the war—the mood for Wagner was likely limited after occupation, despite a bit of a company-history with Tristan, seeing that Kirsten Flagstad made her Isolde debut on the stage of the Nationaltheateret in 1932. Tristan is back now, in the glorious new opera house, as part of the laudable attempt to groom the company to match the world class of its physical exterior.

John Helmer Fiore and the orchestra did their part to that effect: Him brimming with joy in the pit; his dedicated Opera Orchestra providing a clean reading, in neutral territory somewhere between grand romantic sweep and Italianate flow; well north of competent, slightly south of outstanding. (If you can hear the noise a muted TV makes, you might have been distracted by the persistent ~17kHz signal coming from the conductor monitors which I found distinctly distracting for the first time in this house.)

The principals made for a good show, too: Karen Foster’s Isolde acting is restricted by lack of agility and incomprehensible German. But her vocal determination and force make more than up for it. Robert Gambill’s Tristan went the other way about it: His voice was sometimes strained—as the rôle is wont to do to tenors—but his pronunciation and diction were pure joy. Ole Jørgen Kristiansen, the only other cast-member with good German, waited until the third act for his Kurwenal to really make an impression, but he certainly made one then; with clarity and power that, so late in the opera, can be short in supply. The off-stage performances of Brenden Gunnell (shepherd) and Jens-Erik Aasbø (steersman) were notably pleasant.

Another notch in the “Mission Excellence” tally came courtesy of Robert Innes Hopkins’s neither modern nor old fashioned sets and Simon Mills’ fine lighting. A large suspended lamp swings violently from left to right as a ship rolls and yawns in waving line with the overture. We’re in a seaborne field hospital hosting three beds in the bowels of the Cornwall-bound ship. The bow is full of shipping crates (Dowry-Я-Us); Tristan and Kurwenal sit in splendid isolation on the second level, doing nothing; maybe playing patience.

For the second act, the shell of the boat – widened – frames the stage. The crates are stacked to form a tower (a sword rakishly sticking out at the top, Excalibur-like). Through a crack stage-right, wild poppies eke out a widening patch reaching a wider opening stage-left. Breaking up further, the ship-elements on either side of the stage transform into towering cliffs for act three. The crates are now strewn about like skeletons spat out of permafrost graves and the dim light casts a dystopian shadow with glowing overtones of uranium green.

That’s as far as the good bits go, but there is the small matter of Daniel Slater’s direction and costumes by Robert Innes Hopkins, undoing some of the credit his sets deserve. He made Magne Fremmerlid’s King Marke look like something that fell off a Russian provincial theater’s truck; the costume combining maximum banality with a generous dash of ugly in huntsman-green (like Merry-Man Melot) to distinguish Team Marke from the vaguely naval dull-blue costumes of Team Tristan. Fremmerlid’s very low and nicely resonant voice, neither melodic nor agile, should make him well suited for Russian basso profundo roles but it wasn’t the stuff cut out for Wagner’s regal ruler.

During the overture, two naked lovers frolic about, cower to the side, get dressed and tucked in when the Vorspiel is over. Amid baffled gestures, standing, turning, and other time-kill gyrations, Brangäne (dour Tuija Knihtilä) works on the “balsam” from mother’s potion bags which are the IV bags next to the hospital beds. The faux fatal potion consists of blood drawn from the arms of the beds’ occupants—the two lovers and a little boy. Tristan and Isolde fight for the syringe’s right to end their suffering. As the ship arrives at Cornwall, the fateful, but very much alive lovers movingly shrink from the light that shines on their illicit love through the opening crack in the hull.

The intimacy of the second act is difficult to stage, but setting it as two independent dramatic monologues, delivered to the ‘invisible audience’, standing about and wearily gesticulating, is the least satisfying option. We’re left with two hospital beds now and our lazy lovers from act one re-appear. They get busy soon – literally (by which I mean metaphorically) – and perform some surrogate copulation while the singers slow-dance in the background. Eventually all four of them fall into a pile of bodies from under which Isolde sings, with a scrotum dangling somewhere near her face: An awkward victory-huddle after the cup-clinching 1:0 for Nudists United. Kurwenal enters, gallivanting through the flowers with unintentional hilarity and a warning on his lips.

Oh, to have lived and seen the literal and metaphorical manifestation of “poppycock!”

Other questions remain unanswered upon first exposure to the production. Why does King Marke, the only one to actually sit on the literal flower bench, jointly stab Tristan (!) with Melot? The hospital bed countdown (now at one, reserved for ailing Tristan), makes sense at last. But why does our formerly naked girl, now in wallowing white, and pregnant, somnambulate by—minutes after Tristan’s references to his mother? Never mind. We’ll always have poppycock.

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All pictures courtesy Oslo Opera, © Erik Berg

Ionarts-at-Large: Leif Ove Andsnes - Understatement and Innovation

Haydn – yes! How wonderful to see that Leif Ove Andsnes—along with Solveig Kringlebotn and Truls Mørk Norway’s foremost classical artist—brought a Haydn Sonata to his recital at Oslo Opera House. But to see the C-Minor Sonata (No.33, Hob.XVI:20) atop of the bill irked me amid delight. Haydn is not the warm-up, not the oh-this-is-nice-too piece amid more flashy Bartók, Debussy, and Chopin. Just like Haydn Symphonies, however desperately welcome they are in Philharmonic concerts, ought not be the ‘warm-up overture’ before the ‘real composers’. But it’s hard to grumble when Haydn is played with such sincerity (a humorous sincerity, as befits the composer) and earthbound preciousness as Andsnes did. He did so, unfazed by quadraphonic bronchial utterances from the audience that pockmarked all three movements with bemusing regularity.

J.Haydn, Five Piano Sonatas, L.O.Andsnes EMI

Bartók’s Suite for Piano op.14 is a little engine that could, chugging away with whimsy, delight, and lots of rhythmic appeal… sides that Andsnes played up perfectly. It’s a delight in concert, benefitting considerably—like so much Bartók—from live performance. Perhaps this is one reason why Andsnes, amid his vast output for Virgin Classics and EMI, has not recorded any solo-piano Bartók. Stylistically switching on a dime, Andsnes performed three of Debussy’s Images: muscular tone paintings in his hands, rich in nuance and dynamic shades and gratifyingly devoid of clichéd pastels. Here, as elsewhere, a sense of innate rightness ruled. Andsnes makes musical points with everything he plays, but they’re often so subtle, that it’s hard to tell what point that might be. His success isn’t accidental; it comes from being one of the great understated innovators among pianists.

The second half of the recital was given over to Chopin. First: four uninhibited, muscular waltzes without any faux-French flavor and none of the ‘wilting lily’ Chopin-pretensions. This was extraordinarily healthy, robust Chopin – as were the following two ballades and the first, B-Major, Nocturne. When it was over and done with, four encores placated the grateful, proud audience. The Chopin Waltz, the Rachmaninoff Étude-tableau, the Granados Spanish Dance were all welcome. But there was one more, he wanted to squeeze in. At least one bit of Grieg—the composer he has championed more than any other in his quarter of a century long career—in this otherwise Grieg-less Oslo recital. Unfortunately the Lyric Piece op.54/2 (“Gangar”) is such a bloody ear-worm that leaving the opera house—which had incidentally showed itself a quality recital space—it dominated the memory at the exclusion of all the carefully balanced diversity that had come before.

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Ionarts-at-Large: Four Last Songs with Camilla Nylund

When Marin Alsop and Paul Lewis were the attractions on the program of the Oslo Philharmonic (with Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto to add to the star power), the ungainly Oslo Concert Hall was sold out to the last, expanded seat. A week later Richard Strauss’ Four Last Songs and Camilla Nylund headed the bill, with music director Jukka-Pekka Saraste conducting, and the attendance was scarcely half as large. They missed out, for starters, on Henri Dutilleux’ atmpospheric, prettily meandering Mystére de l’instant: A 15 minute work for strings, dulcimer, and percussion that slips and slides toward its ambivalent conclusion with several neat, small solos for the first desks and timpanist along the way. Easy on the ears, nothing conservative patrons need to run away from, but nothing—admittedly—that will have tickets flying off the shelf.

Dutilleux, Mystére de l’instant ..., H.Graf / Bordeaux Aquitaine NO Arte Nova R.Wagner, R.Strauss, "Transformation", C.Nylund / H.Lintu / Tampere PO Ondine Mozart, "Symphonies 39 & 40, R.Jacobs / Freiburg Baroque Orchestra Harmonia Mundi

Camilla Nylund from the Finnish-Swedish town Vaasa (named after the Swedish king of crisp-bread fame) has delighted me in Munich and Salzburg and on record in the past. Her Four Last Songs continued in that line of pleasing memories. She swam herself free after a forcefully determined “Spring”, where her voice had narrow, piercing moments. Her voice is not a lush instrument, and carries very easily over the orchestra without being forced. In her more malleable lower register, at its best display in “September”, she can add just that hint of velvet that makes Strauss so seductive. An air of propriety gave way to gorgeousness with the last lines of “September”, leading into a round and homogenous “At Bedtime”. The now infamous Marimba ringtone’s disruption was only brief and caused no scandal… but the following highlight of the mini-song cycle, the last stanza of “At Bedtime”, was played as if the orchestra was not aware of the rarified beauty this moment contained. To put a positive spin on it: it wasn’t milked for its unique beauty. It fit the greater scheme of the orchestra’s performance: not perfect, very respectably, and a bit anonymously—much line with past experiences.

This combination made, for all the preceding beauty, looking forward to the concluding Mozart Symphony—No.39—difficult. It’s very easy to underestimate how challenging it is to play Mozart, even late, heavier Mozart, after a bill of 20^th century modernish/romantic fare. It’s difficult enough for most modern philharmonic orchestras to play Mozart well when their musical blood has been coagulated by too much ‘oomph-music’, and Viennese classics coming out like bad-habit Schumann.

Happily it wasn’t Mozart-as-Schumann in this case. And while it also wasn’t light and tip-toed Mozart à la Freiburg Baroque Orchestra or even Concertebouw / Josef Krips, it was a thoroughly engaging, very crisply driven affair, combining sprightliness and body and energetic all the way to the finale. Sarastre steered his musicians with unfussy aplomb that made, individual kinks apart, for the best playing of the night and possibly for the best playing I have heard of the Oslo Philharmonic yet.

Superlørdag with the Kringkastingsorkestret

Yay, it’s Superlørdag with the Kringkastingsorkestret! Say what? Why, “Super-Saturday” with Oslo’s Norwegian Broadcasting Cooperation Symphony Orchestra (KORK), of course.

Super Saturdays are the surprisingly casual afternoon-outings of the orchestra that take place in the University’s aula, famous for and dominated by the vast, rugged Edvard Munch paintings that hang—mural-like—on its walls. If some of them look like hasty figural studies—they’re not, as an exhibition at the Munch museum showed: for each final product there exist dozens of preliminary versions from pencil sketch to drafts in oil. The three main canvases have a more polished look to them and depict, to the left: “History”. To the right: “Alma Mater”. Up front, as the centre piece of this virtual triptych, hangs the eventually fascinating picture “The Sun”, radiating over orchestra and audience.


The KORK can’t have it easy as the third orchestra in a town that hasn’t struck me as particularly proud of the classical music element of its cultural offerings. It has journeyed from light music starting in 1946 under Øivind Bergh to a modern Radio Symphony Orchestra covering a vast repertoire that holds the flag of contemporary music up in Oslo. Along the way, which included shuddersome Eurovision Song Contest muzak-duty, they seem to have attained a smallish but loyal following. Certainly the crowd, shy of 300, that came out on this prematurely sunny Lørdag, March 24^th, was distinct and much more heterogeneous than that seen at the Philharmonic or Opera.

It was rewarded, too. Principal conductor Thomas Søndergård led the orchestra in a light and breezy program that suited the weather and started with Prokofiev’s First Symphony. Aided by the surprisingly fine, resonant acoustic with just the right amount of reverb, the KORK’s performance had a definite spring in its step, yet was full and burnished and might be said to have—successfully—punched well above its weight.

Francis Poulenc’s Piano Concerto is a natural charmer and Christian Ihle Hadland, who had put a smile on my face with Mozart when he substituted for Lars Vogt at the Oslo Philharmonic last year, married the music’s light wit and ease seamlessly with its romantic sound. Poulenc himself will have known whether his Sinfonietta was meant as cute or serious, exotic or conventional, but I often can’t—until the finale when it puts all the chips down on joie de vivre. The orchestra hadn’t, by then, lost much of the engaged enthusiasm from the Prokofiev, and only little more of the initial accuracy… helping a good deal to making Superlørdag live up to its name.

Oslo Internasjonale Kirkemusikkfestival: Crux with Via Crucis

Liszt must be the most famous, least appreciated composer. Everyone knows him, no one listens to him. A sentiment that rang a bell with Esa Pekka Salonen: “Liszt is a case in point of course. As a name he is extremely well known, and who knows his music? Very few. Absolutely.” Was he doing any Liszt? “Hmmm… It so happens that the orchestral repertoire is not the best Liszt. I’m a big fan of the late piano music and some orchestral pieces, also. I like the Faust Symphony a lot. But no, I haven’t performed even that piece for the longest time.He’s a composer I should take a better look at, actually. I just got the score of Christus last year. And I’ve been looking at it from time to time. That looks very beautiful.”

It sounds beautiful, too. In fact it’s perhaps the most touching, striking Liszt among the more obscure of his compositions, unashamed of touches of conventional beauty. I’m also intrigued by The Bells of Strasbourg (from which Wagner found inspiration for Parsifal) and many other works. In fact, I’m often very intrigued about off-the-beaten-path Liszt works, ready to discover and fall in love… only to be repelled or let down or gliding back into indifference after being met by the music with emotional ambivalence.

F.Liszt, Via crucis, Z.Pad / Debrecen Kodaly Chorus / D.Karasszon Hungaroton

Via Crucis is one of those pieces that I go to in hope of finding that Liszt is indeed as popular to the ears as he is prominent… only to scurry and try again, elsewhere or with a new recording of Via Crucis again, a year later. To my ears, the original version for organ, chorus, and baritone, is more an organ work than a choral piece; a difficult one at that. Perhaps that’s why recent recordings have gone for the version for piano and chorus, which is altogether more often recorded than the original. (Among the most successful, to my jaded ears, is a brand new performance with Roland Conil with Roland Hayrabedian and Musicatreize on Phaia Music PHU001)

The Accentus Chamber Choir under Laurence Equilbey (Brigitte Engerer on piano, naïve V5061) might have the most spot-on choral performance but can’t ultimately make a case for the eclectic work. Among the versions with organ, Johannes Wenk (carus 83.144) and Dezső Karasszon (Hungaroton HCD 32685) come closest to suggestion cohesion and real, almost desperate earnestness to me.


The 2012 Oslo Church Music Festival had put the Passion and Passion music front, back, and center. Literally: it opened and closed with Bach’s St. Matthew and St. John’s Passion… and in the middle waited two domestic passion world premieres: Ketil Bjørnstad’s “A passion for John Donne” Trond Kverno’s St. Luke’s Passion. Alas, the latter had to be cancelled and the concert at the Oslo Cathedral on Wednesday, March 14^th had Via Crucis coupled with Kverno’s St. Mark Passion in one of only two concerts I managed at the impressive and innovative Festival.

It’s unusually to have the established composer/work up front, and the contemporary work second. At least it doesn’t conform to standard concert programmer’s ‘sandwiching’ techniques that are designed to expose ears to new, sometimes challenging music, by giving them as little incentive or opportunity to bolt. After hearing the two works side by side, the decision made sense: Liszt’s work is the challenging one, and Kverno soothes.

The Oslo Domkor under Terje Kvam—lined up before the quaint, almost naïve carved bas-relief altar piece of the Cathedral—was not to blame for the Liszt-struggles. But the way the reminiscing organ part (Kåre Nordstoga) became a halting, staggering endurance test for the ears was. It must be anguished, handwringing expressions that Liszt wanted to compose into the often improvisatory-sounding music for the organist. And there must be a way to find the entry-point into something that’s personal, deep-felt. Alas, just playing the notes correctly has no chance of making anything but awkwardness tangible… amid which the choral outbursts seem strangely misplaced. And what might be haunting stillness, ideally, becomes just a breakdown in communication. When Veronica comes around the corner in Station VI, the question arises whether the best bit in Liszt ought to be by old Johann Sebastian Bach.

During Trond Kverno’s Markuspasjonen the chorus transformed from admirably persistent to a group that sparkled with energy and joy as they fed on the traditional, conventional harmonies of the music and its chugging rhythms. The fine acoustic of the Cathedral, with a pleasant reverb of just over one second (up to two and a half, at full throttle), made their contributions all the more effective. Roguishly handsome tenor Matthias Gillebo, with that hint of not too long ago having enjoyed a career as a mischievous chorister, sonorously crooned his part, written in close parallel to Gregorian chant, perhaps with one eye on the Graduale Romanum. With music that is always drawn back to a resting pitch from which it deviates rarely and only briefly when it does, the result bears more of a pacific, monodic quality than it remains memorable. Liszt, admittedly, has Kverno there.

Oslo Internasjonale Kirkemusikkfestival: Bach as Eschatology

Most churches strive upward to point toward the heavens, if not outright try to touch them. Oslo’s main church, the red-brick Domkirke, stays notably earthbound. Squatting compactly in the centre of Oslo, two blocks from the central train station, it makes me wonder if Norway’s mid-19^th century protestant ethic and aesthetic—that was when the 300 year old church was last re-built—would have deemed it unseemly to aspire to ambitiously to lofty heights. Or perhaps the architecture speaks more to a realism of statics than the Norwegian religio-aesthetic psyche.

Be that as it may, the Cathedral is central to the Oslo’s International Church Music Festival, which lasts from the 9^th until the 18^th of March. The festival is impressive in names and numbers: Seventeen performances in 10 days, four world premieres, and a list of performers that includes Peter Neumann, Grete Pederson and her Norske Solistkor, Le Concert Lorrain and the Nederlands Kamerkoor, Christoph Prégardien, Andreas Scholl, Dietrich Henschel, Ruth Ziesak et al.

The fourth concert of the festival was a late-night organ recital with Pieter van Dijk at said Domkirke on its modern main organ, a 1998 Jan Ryde-built instrument with 53 stops, over 4000 pipes, three manuals and pedal keyboard. On the bill: Clavierübung No.3.

Among the four so-titled keyboard exercises, only the third part is commonly known by this name*. And even then, Clavierübung III is probably still better known as the “German Organ Mass” (an Albert Schweitzer-given nickname). And perhaps better known yet is its opening and end, the Prelude and Fugue BWV522. English speaking Bach aficionados know it as the “St. Anne” Prelude & Fugue.

J.S.Bach, Clavier-Übung, Part III, Ludwig Lusser Gramola

In a way, Pieter van Dijk’s performance sounded like the Cathedral looks: stocky, short-legged, solid. He didn’t bound about, lyrically and lithe. And while that might not sound like a very flattering description, the gain of this approach was immediately notable. Van Dijk extracted all that stubborn, compelling rhythmical force from the Prelude, Fugue, and ten (out of 21) Chorale treatments that Clavierübung III contains. Different ears listen to Bach differently, no doubt; to mine there is nothing greater than to be carried forward, inevitably and inexorably, afloat on the sound… to literally breath in harmony with the music. Head-waggling and foot-tapping included. This is precisely what van Dijk achieved, aided and abetted by the gloriously symphonic, well balanced instrument that shines additionally with beautiful sounding reed pipes.

Not everyone will experience the same pacific, serene elation from this music (when well performed.) What will profoundly affect one listener (like this one), might not do much to the next. It is difficult to separate the flooding of the body and spirit with all that is good from the more sober reality of someone to whom Bach’s (organ) works are not the alpha and omega. It is easy, however, to suggest that anyone who has a strong inclination towards Bach, will have found this recital rewarding somewhere along these enthusiastic lines.


* The others are the Partitas (Clavierübung I), the French Overture together with the Italian Concerto (Clavierübung II), and the Goldberg Variations (Clavierübung IV).

Picture taken by Anne-Sophie Ofrim (Wikimedia commons)

Musical Journey Through Norway

April in Oslo. Celebratory sunshine and blue skies; weather as if made for a train trip across the Hardangerviddato mountain plateau from Oslo to Bergen, Norway’s second largest town and home of Edvard Grieg. It's a trip alleged to be one of the world’s loveliest.

Summer or winter are said to be the times to take this trip. Spring, as it turns out, might not be ideal. Through the woody hills and into the tunnels, out of Oslo, to Drammen and on toward Hønefoss, along the Drammenselva river and the large, ice-covered Tyrifjorden lake, nature is still on the verge of turning from brown to green, with spotty patches of snow in the shadows and on the slopes… A sense of white-green-gray ambivalence pervades most of the trip.

The rivers are lined by dense conifer forests, sometimes dotted with white birches. Every once in a while the view is enriched by farms around which a timid green shows that spring will take court even up here. Eventually. Black glazed tiles on little red houses glisten in the sun and the hill sides get steeper; always along rivers that have already carved out a route that the train tracks (built about a hundred years ago) now only need to follow. Caravan-colonies (Germans, a safe guess) cling to little patches of land between the woods like birds to rocks off shore.

J.Svendsen, Norwegian Rhapsodies et al., South Jutland SO / B.Engeset Naxos

With the convenience of free internet service (on and off in the people-free mountainside of central Norway) and the Naxos Music Library putting most of the music I could possibly want to access at my fingertips, the soundtrack is easily picked; I start with the gorgeous, lush romantic music of Johan Svendsen (1840-1911). Romeo og Julie op.18, The four Norwegian Rhapsodies (opp.17, 19, 21, 22), and Zorahayda op.11 (Naxos 8.570322) are like a blend of the most agreeable elements of Liszt, Tchaikovsky, and Wagner. This isn’t too surprising; like most Scandinavian composers of that time, Svendsen studied in Germany and played violin in the first ever assembled Bayreuth Festival Orchestra for the cornerstone-laying ceremony (1872). Svendsen, who was head of the Royal Opera in Copenhagen, is equally at home in the showy and grand, tender and sweet, and fleeting Ballet-influenced bits, all of which appear in the Rhapsodies.

The wood-paneled Norwegian State Railway’s train, with light beige leather seats in a reasonably comfortable arrangement, meanders along, crawling through the hillside toward Gol (“Crowing”), with its little wooden station building in the official Bergen Railway canary-yellow and onward to Ål. The train enters one tunnel, then another and another… and suddenly the ice on the lakes get thicker and whiter and the mountaintops, near and distant, gleam in snowy white. In the sun the dark blue Hallingdalselva river flows among the rocks, with thick packed snow-banks hanging off both sides.

White Night: Impressions of Norwegian Folk Music, Det Norske Solistkor / Grete Pedersen BIS

“White Night – Impressions of Norwegian Folk Music” on BIS (SACD-1871) with arrangements for Hardanger fiddle (Gjermund Larsen), chorus (Norwegian Soloist’s Choir), and folk singer (Berit Opheim Versto) conducted by Grete Pedersen is the next logical, perfectly suited, though ever so slightly melancholic choice. Norwegian music without the strong German influence, it turns out, has at its heart a mildly despondent, drop-dead-gorgeous but glum element… and even a wedding march (“Brurmarsj fra Valsøfjord”, my favorite piece) seems to remind more of the hard time to come than the joy of the unifying moment. Occasionally, with a waltz or an explicit dance tune, the mood moves toward reluctant rejoicing… but the Hardingfele can fiddle away as vigorously as it might, it retains an air of ‘memories past’.

During “Jeg lagde mig sa sildig” (“I lay down so late”), my ears perk. Haven’t I heard this before? A little search on the Naxos Music Library reveals: Yes. Edvard Grieg has also set this folk tune for chorus, and the same forces have recorded it for BIS last year… so the next tracks on my playlist are set.

E.Grieg, Choral Music, Det Norske Solistkor / Grete Pedersen BIS

“Choral Music by Grieg” (SACD-1661) is a particularly enchanting disc of pieces written for chorus by Grieg and arranged so by others. The popular “At Rondane”, op.33, No.2 (originally for voice and piano) is plain gorgeous in its moody way and resonant, in full-bodied choral guise. Grieg himself arranged two religious songs for mixed choir of which “Withered, Fallen – At the Bier of a Young Wife” sounds predictable but touching with its cathedral-like piety. The non-Norwegian ear will always pick up a certain preciousness: that silver-voiced, Christmas-choir touch with scents and touches of mulled wine, snow boots, and blond locks under a woolen hat. But this is perhaps particular to my Washington-conditioned ears which had hitherto always associated enthusiastic Norwegian choirs with Christmas. “Margaret’s Cradle Song” is a 90 second gem written in appreciation of the birth of his daughter Alexandra in 1868. It is set to the Ibsen poem of the same name and is hauntingly beautiful. Alexandra, however, never got to appreciate her song; she died shortly after it was written. Tragic yet, being set to something by Ibsen, also terribly appropriate.

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