Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra: With the hardanger fiddle in one hand and the violin in the other

The sound of the hardanger fiddle, with its distinctive tuning and resonating overtones, connects Norway to its deepest musical traditions while channeling centuries of joy and sorrow, patience and fortitude. A brand-new piece by our Composer-in-Residence Ørjan Matre combines the evocative sounds of the hardanger fiddle with the refined world of the classical violin. To play it, we welcome a musician who excels on both instruments and even managed to win Norway the Eurovision Song Contest on her hardanger fiddle in 2009 – Ragnhild Hemsing.

After the new concerto and two hypnotic excerpts from Matre’s own reworking of Edvard Grieg’s Lyric Pieces, Nicholas Collon conducts a symphony by Shostakovich that has been likened to ‘a film score without a film.’ In his arresting Symphony No 11, Shostakovich depicted the failed uprising of 1905, a pre-cursor to the Russian Revolution of 12 years later. As the great cellist Mstislav Rostropovich observed, this intensely-felt piece bears witness not just to the events of 1905, but to the tragically persistent patterns of suppression and violence in human history.