VOLT 22 by Ensemble Allegria

Béla Bartók, Joseph Haydn

Ensemble Allegria

VOLT 22

Format: SACD
Label: Lawo Classics
UPC: 7090020180946
Catnr: LWC 1082
Release date: 19 June 2015
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Label
Lawo Classics

UPC
7090020180946

Catalogue number
LWC 1082

Release date
19 June 2015

Album

Artist(s)

Composer(s)

About the album

Youthfulness and energy are modern ideals, and for Ensemble Allegria, with their strong affection for music and their average age of 25, the sky is the limit.

In this recording, aptly called VOLT 22 for the 22 string players, they meet with three composers, one still full of youthful vigour, the other two past middle-age and looking back. Admittedly, it is difficult to put all three of them into one framework: Haydn lived his life under quite different circumstances, both personally and socially, from Bartók and Shostakovich.

Although the Seven Years’ War (1756-63) was practically fought on Haydn´s doorstep, it is hardly noticeable in his first cello concerto. The Second World War and its consequences, however, certainly had an impact on the music of Béla Bartók and Dmitri Shostakovich. Bartók saw it coming when composing in 1939, while in 1960 his Russian colleague was lucky to have survived it. In the shadows of Hitler and Stalin, a quite different atmosphere characterizes their works. Nevertheless, the three works in this recording are all bursting with extreme contrasts, containing both intensity and contemplation. Thus they challenge Ensemble Allegria and their principal cellist, Frida Fredrikke Waaler Wærvågen, in a most welcome manner.

Jugendlichkeit und Energie sind moderne Ideale und für das Ensemble Allegria, mit seiner starken Zuneigung zur Musik und einem Durchschnittsalter von 25, ist -wie sagt man so Neudeutsch- “the sky the limit”. In der vorliegenden Aufnahme, treffend als VOLT 22 für die 22 Streicher betitelt, trifft das Ensemble auf drei Komponisten, einer immer noch voller Jugendkraft, die anderen beiden mittleren Alters. Hier eine Parallele zu ziehen fällt deutlich schwer: Haydn lebte sein Leben unter ganz anderen Umständen, sowohl persönlich als auch sozial, verglichen mit Bartók und Schostakowitsch. Trotz der Tatsache, dass der Siebenjährige Krieg (1756-1763) praktisch auf Haydns Haustür ausgetragen wurde, ist dies in seinen ersten Cellokonzert kaum spürbar. Der Zweite Weltkrieg und seine Folgen hatten aber sicherlich einen Einfluss auf die Musik von Béla Bartók und Dmitri Schostakowitsch. Bartók sah im Jahr 1939 das Unglück während des Komponierens kommen, während im Jahr 1960 sein russischer Kollege das Glück hatte, es überlebt zu haben. Im Schatten von Hitler und Stalin, charakterisiert eine ganz andere Atmosphäre ihre Werke. Dennoch enthalten die drei Werke voller Gegensätze dieser Aufnahme sowohl Intensität als auch Kontemplation.

Artist(s)

Ensemble Allegria

Ensemble Allegria ranks among Norway’s finest music ensembles and is known for combining its high artistic standard with spontaneity and flexibility. The orchestra consists of 25 permanent musicians and has from the beginning been managed by the musicians themselves under the artistic direction of Maria Angelika Carlsen. In addition to its own concert series “NÅ” in Oslo, Ensemble Allegria has performed at large music festivals in Norway and appeared with some of the world’s leading soloists, including Tine Thing Helseth, Martin Fröst, Truls Mørk, Lawrence Power, Kathryn Stott and Benjamin Schmid. The ensemble has released four recordings on the LAWO Classics label, two of which were nominated for Spellemannprisen, Norway’s Grammy. In recent years the ensemble has worked closely together...

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Frida Fredrikke Waaler Wærvågen (cello)

Frida Fredrikke Waaler Wærvågen is a Norwegian cellist with a long and impressive list of accomplishments. She began lessons at Horten Music School at age five. In 1998 she was accepted at Barratt Due Institute of Music in Oslo, where she studied for six years with Professor Aage Kvalbein. Frida Fredrikke studied with Professor Truls Mørk at the Norwegian Academy of Music, completing a Bachelor’s degree in the spring of 2011. She has also studied with Professor Frans Helmerson. In the spring of 2014, Frida Fredrikke completed a Master’s degree following two years of study with Professor Torleif Thedéen at Edsberg Castle, Royal College of Music, in Stockholm.
Prizes and scholarships Frida Fredrikke has won, both nationally and internationally, include: International Competition Young Musician in Tallin, Estonia; the Antonio Janigro International Cello Competition in Porec, Croatia; Arve Tellefsen’s Music Award; RWE Dea Music Scholarship; the Järnåker stipend; and the Wessel Prize awarded by the Norwegian Society. She has made her mark as a soloist with orchestras at home and abroad, including Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, the Norwegian Radio Orchestra, the Munich Radio Orchestra, the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, Kaunas City Symphony Orchestra, Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, and the Royal Norwegian Navy Band.
Upon completion of her Master’s degree, Frida Fredrikke began as solo cellist with the Royal Swedish Opera Orchestra in Stockholm. She is now a freelance cellist based in Oslo and is in frequent demand as chamber musician and substitute principal cello with Norwegian orchestras. Frida Fredrikke appears regularly as cello soloist, and she serves also as principal cello in the string orchestra Ensemble Allegria. Since the autumn of 2016 she has been on the faculty of “Musikk på Majorstua” as lecturer in cello, and she performs at Norwegian schools with her programme “Aleine med tankane” under the auspices of “Kulturtanken”.
Frida Fredrikke plays a Nicolas Lupot cello from 1823, kindly lent to her by Dextra Musica.

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Composer(s)

Béla Bartók

Next to Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky, Béla Bartók was a third seminal innovator of European art music at the start of the twentieth century. Bartók, too, sought a way out of the deadlock of tonal music around 1900, and he found it in folk music. Initially, he tied in with the nationalistic tradition of Franz Liszt with his tone poem Kossuth, but eventually he found his own voice with the rediscovery of the music of Hungarian peasants. Together with Zoltán Kodály he was one of the first to apply the results of folkloric research into his own compositions. One major difference between him and composers of the 19th century, was that Bartók did not adjust to the system of tonality, but created his own musical idiom from folk music. Because of this, his composition style was flexible to other musical trends, without having to violate his own view points. For example, his two Violin sonates come close to Schoenberg's free expressionism, and after 1926 his music started to show neoclassicistic tendencies, comparable to Stravinsky's music. Bartók was not just interested in Hungarian folk music, but could appreciate musical folklore from all of the Balkan, Turkey and North-Africa as well.

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Joseph Haydn

(Franz) Joseph Haydn was a prolific Austrian composer of the Classical period. He was instrumental in the development of chamber music such as the piano trio and his contributions to musical form have earned him the epithets 'Father of the Symphony' and 'Father of the String Quartet'. Haydn spent much of his career as a court musician for the wealthy Esterházy family at their remote estate. Until the later part of his life, this isolated him from other composers and trends in music so that he was, as he put it, 'forced to become original'. Yet his music circulated widely and for much of his career he was the most celebrated composer in Europe. He was a friend and mentor of Mozart,...

(Franz) Joseph Haydn was a prolific Austrian composer of the Classical period. He was instrumental in the development of chamber music such as the piano trio and his contributions to musical form have earned him the epithets "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet".
Haydn spent much of his career as a court musician for the wealthy Esterházy family at their remote estate. Until the later part of his life, this isolated him from other composers and trends in music so that he was, as he put it, "forced to become original". Yet his music circulated widely and for much of his career he was the most celebrated composer in Europe.
He was a friend and mentor of Mozart, a teacher of Beethoven, with whom he formed the First Viennese School. He was also the older brother of composer Michael Haydn.

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