The spectrum of music-making in Norway is as diverse as its variations in seasonal daylight - perhaps, it’s tempting to say, even a product of it. How else could a country produce both the infernal extremes of the black metal movement alongside shiny pop exports like a-ha? This diversity exists in the country’s contemporary classical scene as much as anywhere else. Here, we take a look at key musical figures in Norway’s modern compositional landscape.
Arne Nordheim (b. 1931)
Though not strictly in the category of the contemporary, having passed away in 2010, Arne Nordheim nevertheless remains an essential presence in Norwegian music. Indeed, such was his importance to music in the country that from 1982 up until his death he lived in Grotten, a residence next to Oslo’s Royal Palace bequeathed to people of special artistic merit (he also received a state funeral). Moreover, it speaks to Norway’s status as a haven for artistic freedom that this composer beloved of the state was not a conservative but a staunch experimentalist. He left the Oslo Conservatory of Music due to what he saw as its overly orthodox attitudes to theory, travelling to Paris where he studied musique concrète and electronics and later Stockholm, where he came into contact with Ligeti. Nordheim would become known for his “sound sculpture” installations, which used electroacoustic methods, though he was primarily an orchestral composer. In his 1975 composition Spur, for example, Nordheim uses the rarely-exploited sonic potential of the accordion to blur the lines between acoustic and electronic sound in concerto form. In this performance by the Norwegian Radio Orchestra, the soloist teases out low, synth-like drones and skittering high figures from the instrument, all the while contending with the orchestra’s ominous backing and leading up to a hectic cadenza.
Ketil Hvoslef (b. 1939)
Ketil Hvoslef is a living link between Norway’s contemporary musical scene and its 20th-century past. His father was Harald Sæverud, the influential composer whose 1940 composition Ballad of Revolt gave voice to the anger at the German occupation of Norway during the Second World War. Perhaps as a result of his father’s Neoclassical tendencies, Hvoslef’s music feels more accessible that some of his more angular countrymen. See for example his 2015 composition Jubeljahr (1765) mit dem Haydnsignal (watch a video of the world première), in which rousing chromatic figures in the strings are propelled onwards by martial snare rhythms, or Il compleanno (The Birthday), which despite its unusual writing conveys a sense of delirious fun. Other notable works include Hvoslef’s tone poem Mi-Fi-Li, his compositions for organ and his work for the stage and television.
Olav Berg (b. 1949)
Born in the small village of Kvelde, Olav Berg specialises in writing for wind instruments, with a slew of concertos for trumpet, clarinet and bassoon, as well as a number of chamber pieces for wind groups. This predilection for wind likely comes from Berg’s own instrumental exploits – in an earlier life, he played trumpet in the navy orchestra. His best-known work is most likely his 1982 composition for orchestra Poseidon, but you can get a sense of his more recent work from Ilze Klava’s performance of of his 2015 Viola Concerto with the Bergen Philharmonic.
Knut Vaage (b. 1961)
Bergen native Knut Vaage is interested in the zones between composed and improvised music, having performed in the improvising groups such as JKL and the Anglo-Norwegian ensemble Fat Battery. That’s not to say he eschews traditional forms altogether, though, having composed full-scale operas such as Khairos (2013) and Song of Soloman (2010). He’s also an avid music educationalist, with a number of projects aimed at introducing young people to contemporary music, and a 2010 opera Veslefrikk angled toward a family audience. Chatter, with its rambunctious, almost filmic opening, gives a real sense of the composer’s playful attitudes to texture, the liminal groans and drones of extended-technique winds dominating the middle section. In the 2015 work Futuration, meanwhile, Vaage collaborated with music technician Thorolf Thuestad to expand the sound-spectrum of the piece, plumbing strange textural depths using electronics, bowed cymbals, saws and even a siren. Much contemporary music is presented as forward-thinking by dint of its atonality. Here, however, there is a genuinely exciting exploration of timbre. See it performed by the Bergen Philharmonic.