Per Arne Glorvigen

About Per Arne Glorvigen

Per Arne Glorvigen comes from Dovre and is regarded as one of the most important bandoneonists of his generation. He graduated from the Norwegian Academy of Music in 1987 with accordion as his main instrument, then moved to Paris, where he is still based. There he met the Argentine bandoneon virtuoso Juan José Mosalini, who became his teacher on the new instrument.

Alongside tango, Glorvigen has worked to widen the bandoneon repertoire to include baroque, klezmer, pop and above all contemporary music. Willem Jeths, Bernd Franke, Luis Naón and Henrik Hellstenius have all written bandoneon concertos for him, premiered at the Concertgebouw (2001), the Gewandhaus (2003), Radio France (2005) and the Ultima Festival (2008). Composition studies in Paris with Eric Tanguy and Guillaume Connesson have also led him to perform his own works.

He has played with the Alban Berg Quartet, the Apollon Musagète Quartet, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Staatskapelle Dresden, the Russian National Orchestra and Les Solistes de l’Orchestre de Paris. His most important collaborator has been the violinist Gidon Kremer, with whom he has made four CDs, mostly of music by Astor Piazzolla, and given hundreds of concerts around the world.