Allegria

ENSEMBLE ALLEGRIA – SPARKLING DEBUT OF A YOUNG NORWEGIAN ORCHESTRA

Allegria is Italian for merriment and enjoyment, and indeed it was the pleasure of playing together that led a group of music students to launch the orchestra in 2007. For its rapid and resolute development over the past five years, Ensemble Allegria was awarded the Statoil Talent Award for classical music for 2012. The orchestra has been managed independently by its own members since its founding, and the Norwegian Academy of Music has played a significant supportive role.  Its permanent concertmaster and artistic director is Maria Angelika Carlsen.

The ensemble is celebrating its fifth anniversary with the release of its debut album, a recording that pays tribute to nineteenth and twentieth-century Norwegian composers, from Edvard Grieg via Odd Grüner-Hegge and Johan Kvandal to Knut Nystedt.

In the words of the orchestra’s own members: We have long wished to offer something special on our debut recording, and we invite the listener into the atmosphere and culture that abides in the orchestra, Ensemble Allegria. The album contains Norwegian music we play often and like very much. The works span a relatively long period of time, approximately 100 years, from Grieg’s “Holberg Suite” to Knut Nystedt’s “Concerto Arctandriae”. We feel the combination of familiar and less familiar works provides a rich blend of what Norwegian composers have to offer. We hope the listener’s enjoyment of the album will equal the pleasure we had in making it.

Foreword

As artistic director, I wish to thank all my wonderful colleagues who have played a part in this recording. It represents countless hours of voluntary collaboration, and each and every one of the musicians can claim ownership of the music we have recorded. Allegria is one of the most stimulating and exciting undertakings I have been a part of, both musically and socially. The fervor, solidarity, and joy of playing of all involved is unique — and it is, I believe, reflected in this CD. With each project, we grow closer, as musicians and as persons.

Happy listening / Maria Angelika Carlsen

Ensemble Allegria — The Story Behind the Orchestra and the Music

In 2007, some musicians of the former Junior Orchestra at Barratt Due Institute of Music in Oslo were asked by conductor Terje Boye Hansen whether they might like to reunite the orchestra and hold a few concerts at the Arendal Grieg Festival. Besides diverse solo works, we were to perform Grieg's "Holberg Suite". Maria Angelika was elected concertmaster, and we received instruction from violinist Øyvind Bjorå, concertmaster of the Norwegian National Opera Orchestra. After several days of effective rehearsals, we were ready for our first outing as orchestra — for the time being, an orchestra without a name. It came the following year, Kammer Allegria, later changed to Ensemble Allegria. The day after our very first concert we were eager to read Agderposten, the local newspaper, and the review was charming, if somewhat restrained: "Vigorous, but with a scruffy sound."

This "scruffy" debut concert was the orchestra's first encounter with the "Holberg Suite". Some years later, we performed it again at Bergen International Festival, with Maria Angelika as both concertmaster and instrumental coach. This time we wished to explore the Baroque character of the piece. The original title of the "Holberg Suite" was "From Holberg's Time", and both the title and the music point back to the Baroque. And on this occasion the concert was an unqualified success.

Terje Boye Hansen was an important person in the founding of Allegria, and it was he as well who introduced us to a number of relatively unknown Norwegian works, such as "Elegiac Melody" by Grüner-Hegge, and "Sonata for Strings" by Johan Kvandal. We were also enthused about another Norwegian neo-classicist, Knut Nystedt. We became especially enamoured of his "Symphony for Strings". But due to an error in ordering the music, we ended up with his "Concerto Arctandriae" for chamber orchestra. This proved to be a splendid work, and we chose to add it to our core repertoire and record it on this album.

Ensemble Allegria has worked with prominent professors and musicians in Norway and abroad. As a matter of course, Maria Angelika has assumed responsibility for the artistic aspect as well, and this, in turn, has taken us one step closer toward the realization of a completely independent orchestra.

"Ensemble Allegria is an orchestra with limitless commitment and inexhaustible energy"

— Notes: members of the orchestra · English translation: Jim Skurdall