Alma Serafin Kraggerud

A violin star in the ascendant.

Alma Serafin Kraggerud (born 2006) was the winner of Virtuos, the solo competition for classical instrumentalists run by the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, NRK. She also received the Norwegian Soloist Prize, which comprises 100 000 kroner and a concert during the Bergen International Festival. The young violinist also represented Norway in the international Young Musicians Competition, where she took third place.

Kraggerud took up the violin at the age of five, and by the age of nine she was a soloist with KORK, the Norwegian Radio Orchestra. Since then she has been a soloist with Stavanger Symphony Orchestra, the Norwegian Arctic Philharmonic Orchestra, the Staff Band of the Norwegian Armed Forces and Wroclaw Symphony Orchestra.

In 2002, the year she turned 16, she was awarded the Øivind Bergh Memorial Prize and the Ånun Lund Rej Memorial Prize for her creativity as a composer and musician. She describes herself as curious and exploratory: 'I think of myself as telling a story without words. That I am a kind of adventurer,' she told the magazine KlassiskMusikk.

In Harald Sæverud's delightful home Siljustøl she performs sonatas by Edvard Grieg and César Franck, accompanied by pianist Natallia Papova.

Photo:  Bartosz Sosnowski