Lost Music Brought Back to Life – Olav Kielland’s Hardanger Fiddle Works Published for the First Time

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Seven world premieres appear on this release with the Norwegian composer Olav Kielland’s chamber music works and compositions for Hardanger fiddle. The compositions for Hardanger fiddle were rediscovered in 2019. Kielland was an exceptional orchestra conductor and one of Norway’s most important composers. His music is often inspired by myths and poetry and is rarely performed. This recording is based on the violinist and musicologist Tor Johan Bøen’s research, and he has made most of the new editions used for this recording based on the composer’s manuscripts, making Kielland’s unknown musical «wild seeds» much more accessible to a wider audience. The release of these works is a major event in the international world of music.

The performers on this recording are the chamber music ensemble Fragaria Vesca, the violinist Tor Johan Bøen and the pianist Eirik Haug Stømner. 

Olav Kielland (1901-1985) the composer

Olav Kielland was born in Trondheim and studied architecture there from 1919–1921. From 1921– ca. 1923 Kielland studied composition and theory with Stephen Krehl and Otto Wittenbecher, and conducting with Otto Lohse at the Leipzig Conservatory of Music. He continued his conducting studies with Felix Weingartner, and Kielland gradually developed into an exceptionally skilled orchestral conductor, more appreciated outside Norway than from within.

Kielland mainly conducted the music of other composers. He composed for his friends and role models, drawing inspiration from composers, writers, philosophers and visual artists with whom he felt a spiritual connection. His early compositions were written in a late Romantic musical language, and gradually he developed a flexible modernist musical language with dissonant polyphony. From the mid-1920s his work with Norwegian contemporary music by composers such as Fartein Valen, Eivind Groven, Bjarne Brustad and David Monrad Johansen gave impulses to his own musical language. Around 1930 he began to study the traditional Hardanger fiddle tunes from the various Hardanger fiddle districts in Norway. He wanted to develop a personal musical language based on the modal harmonies of the folk music and the polyphonic possibilities of the Hardanger fiddle. Kielland moved to Bø in Telemark in the late summer of 1941, where he came into close contact with writers, storytellers, folk singers, fiddlers and nature. In this environment he found the inspiration for most of the works on this release.

Kielland developed a unique musical language, sitting as it does at the intersection between folk music and European musical modernism. 

Olav Kielland’s chamber music and 7 Hardanger fiddle tunes.

String Quartet (Quartetto per due violini, viola e violoncello) op. 22

7 Fiddle Tunes op. 12 a-g

• Raudmyr-hallingen
• Tjøstul Blesterbakken, gangar, 6/8
• Eskvam-halling
• Tussane i Raudmyr, springar
• Vetlvonsbruri, gangar 2/4
• Halling
• Krokbakkjen springar

Tvileikar op. 19-5 cacce per 4 strumenti ad libitum.
Music for violin and piano

• Air
• Serenade i F-dur (Leipzig 1922).
• Porbjörgs melodi og Ernas melodi

Melodia per strumenti a corda op. 15 b

Fragaria Vesca was founded by Tor Johan Bøen in 2006 and is a flexible chamber music ensemble dedicated to performing music from various styles and periods on period instruments. Their repertoire spans from the Baroque era to the 20th century. The core motivation behind this approach is that historically informed performances on period-appropriate instruments help place the music in its natural context. The ensemble's projects are often linked to new musicological research, and they have previously recorded chamber music by Geirr Tveitt, Fartein Valen, David Monrad Johansen, and Halfdan Cleve.

Tor Johan Bøen (violin/Hardanger fiddle) holds a unique position in Norwegian musical life, combining top-level violin training with musicological expertise in specific areas of the string repertoire. At just 13 years old, he won the Norwegian Youth Violin Championship, and by 17, he had secured a place in the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra. After completing his master’s studies at the Norwegian Academy of Music, he continued his studies in the United States, earning his doctorate in 2005. Bøen has made a name for himself by performing music from the Baroque to the 20th century on period instruments—most notably with his ensemble Fragaria Vesca—while also playing modern violin in the Phoebus String Trio and serving as concertmaster in various European orchestras. His in-depth research on the Belgian composer and violinist Eugène Ysaÿe has resulted in recordings and extensive radio programs. In recent years, he has devoted much of his musicological and violinistic work to an in-depth study of manuscripts and scores from Norway’s middle generation of composers. Over the past 15 years, this has resulted in groundbreaking CD recordings of chamber music by Geirr Tveitt, Klaus Egge, Fartein Valen, David Monrad Johansen, and Halfdan Cleve, as well as a recording of Svein Haugetrå’s Hardanger fiddle tunes.

Eirik Haug Stømner (piano) is a Norwegian pianist from Halden. He completed his diploma studies at the Norwegian Academy of Music in the spring of 2018 under the guidance of Professors Einar Henning Smebye and Marianna Shirinyan. Stømner was awarded the Robert Levin Piano Prize in 2019 and has since established himself as a sought-after musician on the Norwegian concert scene. He has performed at Oslo Chamber Music Festival, the Bergen International Festival, Fjord Classics, and has appeared as a soloist with several professional orchestras both in Norway and abroad.