Lise Davidsen and James Baillieu live from Oscarshall Palace in Oslo

James Baillieu and Lise Davidsen rehearsing in Oscarshall Palace
(Photo Hallvard Bræin)

Wagner, R. Strauss, Verdi, Puccini, Grieg, Sibelius, Britten, Kalman, Lerner & Loewe; Lise Davidsen, James Baillieu; Oscarshall Palace, Oslo
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 29 August 2020
The young Norwegian soprano in recital from Norway, combining opera with song and lighter items

On Saturday (29 August 2020) it was the turn of Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen and pianist James Baillieu to perform live as part of the Metropolitan Opera's series Met Stars Live in Concert. Davidsen and Baillieu performed in Oscarshall Palace in Oslo. The recital included operatic arias by Wagner, Richard Strauss, Verdi and Puccini, alongside songs by Grieg, Sibelius, Strauss, Britten, Landon Ronald, Ernest Charles and Lerner and Loewe. [Available on-line until 9 September]

Oscarshall Palace was built in 1852 (before Norwegian independence from Sweden) by King Oscar I. It is rather bijou, a Summer villa rather than large palace, and in the then fashionable neo-Gothic style. The decoration in the dining room, where the concert took place, is a celebration of Norwegian artists. The palace is a venue for the Queen Sonja International Music Competition which Davidsen won in 2015, and which I saw in 2019 [see my article].

We had an introducer to tell us how special the occasion was, though this was soprano Christine Goerke who performed the role with great humour, a short interview between Davidsen and Queen Sonja, and another interview between Davidsen and the Met's Peter Gelb (talking about Davidsen's Met debut as Lise in Tchaikovsky's Queen of Spades). But the meat of the event was Davidsen and Baillieu's recital.

Thankful to be able to play together at all: the Engegård Quartet on recording Mozart, collaborating with Ola Kvernberg and their festival devoted to Olli Mustonen's music

The Engegård Quartet (Photo John Petter Reinertsen)

The Engegård Quartet (Arvid Engegård, Alex Robson, Juliet Jopling, Jan Clemens Carlsen) is a string quartet based in Norway but with a developing international reputation. The quartet's debut CD won praise The Strad, and more recent discs have included works by Grieg, Sibelius and the Norwegian composer Olav Anton Thommessen (born 1946), and the complete Schumann quartets on BIS. Like everyone else, the quartet's plans for 2020 have been upset, but when I chatted to Arvid Engegård and Juliet Jopling by Zoom they were surprisingly upbeat, with cultural events in Norway planning to re-start on a smaller scale and the quartets mini-festival devoted to the music of Olli Mustonen will be going ahead in Oslo in September.

The quartet is part-way through recording Mozart's complete works for string quartet on the Norwegian Lawo label. Issued so far are discs of Mozart's Prussian quartets, and Haydn quartets, with the third volume about to be released. When complete,  the set will run to seven or eight discs (depending on whether items like the arrangements of Bach fugues are included). Whilst the quartet see it as a fun project, the idea arose with the record company, though the quartet had plans to play all of Mozart's mature quartets. The discs will include his early music, written when he was a teenager and this is a totally different world. Yet whilst the music is in a different style to mature Mozart, he is already himself and there is plenty for the listener in the music.

The quartet has other recording plans besides Mozart, though they describe plans to record all three Brahms' quartets as a slow burn project. They have an ongoing project with the Norwegian composer and jazz violinist Ola Kvernberg (born 1981), and he was written two quintets for himself and the Engegård Quartet to play, The Flight and Hypnagogia. They have toured the pieces extensively in Norway and found them popular. The quartet and Kvernberg have already recorded the works, but plans for a release with an associated tour are, inevitably, on hold.

Celebrating 100 years: the Oslo Philharmonic's centenary tour concludes at the Barbican

The Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra performing in Oslo University's Aula in the 1950s

The Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra is 70 this year, and the orchestra's concert at the Barbican on Tuesday 22 October 2019 with its chief conductor Vasily Petrenko is the final one of a celebratory eight-concert six-country European tour. The programme celebrates with one of the most famous of all Norwegian classical works, Grieg's Piano Concerto in which they are joined by Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes. The orchestra also looks back to its first subscription concert in 1919 with Strauss’s tone poem Don Juan, and completes the programme with Shostakovich's Symphony No. 10.

In fact, the orchestras roots go all the way back to 1879 when composers Edvard Grieg and Johan Svendsen founded the Christiania Musikerforening (Christiania Musical Association) - Oslo was then known as Christiania and the country was ruled by the Kings of Sweden. When the National Theatre opened in 1899, the orchestra provided music for the new theatre, and symphony concerts for the Music Society. A dispute between the orchestra and the theatre led to the collapse of the concert series. In 1919, the orchestra was reformed as the Filharmonisk Selskaps Orkester (Orchestra of the Philharmonic Company). Since 1977 the orchestra has given its concerts in Oslo Concert Hall. Vasily Petrenko has been the orchestra's music director since 2013, and in 2020 the role is taken over by Klaus Mäkelä.

Full details from the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra's website and the Barbican website.

The success of a competition is nothing more than the success and career development of the competitors: I chat to Lars Flæten, director of the Queen Sonja International Music Competition

Queen Sonja International Music Competition 2019 -  Astrid Nordstad, Natalia Tanasiiciuc, Sergey Kaydalov, Meigui Zhang, Stefan Astakhov, Adam Kutny and Theodore Browne (Photo Adrian Nielsen)

The Queen Sonja International Music Competition in Oslo, Norway celebrated its 30th anniversary this year [see my review of the final at Oslo Opera House], and during my visit to Oslo I was able to sit down with Lars Flæten, the current director of the festival, to chat about its history and its place in the current busy climate of international competitions. 

Final of the Queen Sonja International Music Competition 2019
First prize winner, Sergey Kaydalov (Russia) & H.M. Queen Sonja of Norway
(Photo Adrian Nielsen)

I was attending the competition as part of a group of journalists from six different countries, Belgium, USA, Spain, Germany, France and the UK, and Lars emphasised that the international recognition of a music competition is important. For him, the success of a competition is nothing more than the success and career development of the competitors. So a competition needs to attract the best singers, and to deliver prize-winners that are in demand. He feels that a competition that fails to deliver this is not relevant.

A competition is dependent on the participants being happy with the competition, yet whilst it has an important role to play Lars certainly does not think that a competition should be everything for a singer's career, in fact the competition is more dependent on the singers than they are on the competition. Lars also feels that the competition has to give a first prize, rather than failing to award one because of the low standard of the competitors (as happens in some international competitions). He comments that if you feel that the standard of the performers reflects badly on the competition then the competition is doing a bad job at attracting performers. And the competition tries to honour the Norwegian tradition of fairness, and ensure that everyone has a chance.

Final of the Queen Sonja International Music Competition in Oslo

Final of the Queen Sonja International Music Competition 2019
First prize winner, Sergey Kaydalov (Russia) & H.M. Queen Sonja on Norway (Photo Adrian Nielsen)

Final of the Queen Sonja International Music Competition; Oslo Opera House
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 23 August 2019
Six young singers from Germany, Poland, Russia, Moldova and China competing in the 30th anniversary edition of the competition

Queen Sonja International Music Competition 2019
Stefan Astakhov (Germany), Risto Joost (Photo Adrian Nielsen)

2019 is the 30th anniversary of the Queen Sonja International Music Competition, and this year the biennial event in Oslo, Norway featured over 300 young singers competing. On Friday 23 August 2019, the final involved six singers from Germany, Russia, Poland, China and Moldova, who sang arias and duets at the Oslo Opera House, in front of a distinguished jury from a variety of walks of musical life. The singers were accompanied by the orchestra of Norwegian Opera, conductor Risto Joost, and the event took place in the presence of HM Queen Sonja of Norway, the very active patron of the festival who presented the prizes (amongst which was one of Her Majesty's own prints).

The finalists, all in their 20s and some as young as 21, were German baritone Stefan Astakhov, English-born German tenor Theodore Browne, Russian baritone Sergey Kaydalov, Polish baritone Adam Kutny, Moldovan soprano Natalia Tanasii and Chinese soprano Meigui Zhang, and the judges were Annilese Miskimmon (director of opera at the Norwegian National Opera & Ballet), the Norwegian opera director Stefan Herheim, the soprano Sumi Jo, Tatjana Kandel (head of artistic planning for the DR Ensembles at the Danish National Symphony Orchestra and Ensembles in Copenhagen), Robert Korner (director of artistic production at Opera National de Lyon and casting director at Vienna State Opera from 2020), baritone Sergei Leiferkus and Diane Zola (assistant general manager at the Metropolitan Opera, New York).

Intimate & highly engaging: Mari Eriksmoen & Sveinung Bjelland in recital at Oscarshall Palace, Oslo

Mari Eriksmoen and Sveinung Bjelland at Osarshall Palace,
Queen Sonja International Music Competition (Photo Sven Gjeruldsen, The Royal Court)

Hugo Wolf, Edvard Grieg, Robert Schumann, Richard Strauss; Mari Eriksmoen, Sveinung Bjelland; Queen Sonja International Music Competition at Oscarshall Palace
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 22 August 2019 Star rating: 5.0 (★★★★★)
Hosted by the Queen of Norway, an intimate yet highly engaging and vividly performed recital of German and Norwegian lieder

Her Majesty Queen Sonja of Norway introducing the recital at Osarshall Palace,
Queen Sonja International Music Competition
(Photo Sven Gjeruldsen, The Royal Court)

The Queen Sonja International Music Competition (Dronning Sonja Internasjonale Musikkonkurranse), which runs in Oslo, Norway from 13 to 23 August 2019, is a biennial voice competition. Named for the present Queen of Norway, Queen Sonja takes an active role in the competition and on 22 August 2019, the day before the finale, hosted a concert at Oscarshall Palace, their bijou 19th century neo-Gothic Summer palace. The concert was due to be given by soprano Melissa Petit, but she had to withdraw owing to illness and her place was taken at short notice by soprano Mari Eriksmoen, who was a finalist in the 2007 competition. Accompanied by pianist Sveinung Bjelland, Mari Eriksmoen sang a programme of songs by Hugo Wolf, Edvard Grieg, Robert Schumann and Richard Strauss.

Built in 1852, before Norway achieved independence, by King Oscar I (King of Sweden and King of Norway), Oscarshall features interior decoration by some of the most significant Norwegian artists of the day. The concert took place in the dining room, which with its striking Romantic neo-Gothic decoration. Large for a dining room, but small for a concert hall, it proved to have attractively warm acoustics, with a very immediate sound which showed off Mari Eriksmoen's lovely vibrant lyric voice and her excellent diction.