Blonde Netter – Music by Alf Hurum

Marianne Thorsen

Violinist Marianne Thorsen  enjoys a varied musical life as a performer. As a soloist, she has performed with the Philharmonia Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, all the Norwegian orchestras and many of the major orchestras in Scandinavia.

With a particular passion for chamber music, Marianne Thorsen was first violin of the Nash Ensemble from 2000–2015 and a founder member of the Leopold String Trio from 1991–2006, touring extensively and appearing at the BBC Proms as well as numerous festivals.

Other notable projects include regular collaborations with Norway’s renowned string orchestra TrondheimSolistene, with whom she recorded Mozart’s violin concertos nos. 3-5 to great critical acclaim, winning the Norwegian Spellemann prize in 2006. 2011–2014 also saw the release of five CDs of music by Halvorsen and Svendsen on the Chandos label, with Thorsen as soloist alongside the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra and Neeme Järvi.

Thorsen was Artistic Director of the Vinterfestspill festival in Røros, Norway from 2009 to 2013. Since 2006 she has been professor of violin at the Department of Music of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim. Marianne plays on a violin by Giovanni Battista Guadagnini from 1745, kindly on loan from the Dextra Musica Foundation.

Mari Eriksmoen

Mari Eriksmoen is a Norwegian lyric soprano with an extensive international career, appearing regularly at leading opera houses and festivals across Europe. She has performed at venues including the opera houses of Vienna, Frankfurt and Munich, and has been a frequent guest at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence.

Eriksmoen received her training at the Norwegian Academy of Music, the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse in Paris, and the Royal Danish Opera Academy in Copenhagen. Her international breakthrough came in 2010 as Zerbinetta in Ariadne auf Naxos at Theater an der Wien, marking the beginning of a broad European career. She has since appeared at major festivals such as Glyndebourne, Savonlinna and the BBC Proms, and made her debut at Teatro alla Scala in 2013. In 2022, she debuted at the Salzburg Festival. In recent seasons, she has taken on a range of new roles at institutions including the Norwegian National Opera, The Royal Danish Theatre and the Tiroler Festspiele Erl.

In addition to her stage work, Eriksmoen is an established concert singer, collaborating with leading orchestras and conductors in a wide-ranging repertoire. She has performed on many recordings of opera, orchestral and song repertoire from the Baroque to the present day. 

Håvard Gimse

Pianist Håvard Gimse is one of Norway’s leading musicians and counts among the Nordic region’s most significant concert and recording artists, with an expansive repertoire including an impressive list of concertos. Known for his highly personal sound, sympathetic approach and investigative programming, Gimse is in frequent demand as both soloist and chamber musician. He has toured throughout Scandinavia and appeared with leading orchestras in Europe, Japan and the USA. Gimse has had a longstanding collaboration with Norwegian cellist Truls Mørk, and they have toured together in Japan, Italy and the USA, as well as releasing critically acclaimed recordings.

Håvard Gimse’s strong affinity for Scandinavian and especially Norwegian music has made him one of the foremost recording artists in this area. His extensive discography includes acclaimed recordings of Nordic repertoire, and he has also been involved in reconstruction work on Geirr Tveitt’s music from lost sources.

Gimse is the recipient of the Grieg Prize (1996) and the Sibelius Prize (2004). He has performed on many of the world’s most prestigious concert stages, including Carnegie Hall in New York City, Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and Wigmore Hall in London. Wherever he performs, he is committed to presenting both well-known and lesser-known Nordic repertoire.

Alf Hurum

Alf Hurum was a Norwegian composer and painter whose career bridged early twentieth-century European training and a later life on the Hawaiian islands. Born in Kristiania (now Oslo) in 1882, he studied composition in Berlin between 1905 and 1907, including lessons with Max Bruch, and married in the city in 1908. His musical output, produced mainly in the years following his return to Norway, included two violin sonatas, the men's chorus piece Lilja, the orchestral suite Eventyrland, the symphonic poem Bendik og Årolilja, and a Symphony in D minor completed in 1927. 

Alongside music, Hurum pursued a parallel career as a painter, and in 1934 he settled permanently in Honolulu, where he became an active figure in the local arts scene, serving as president of the Association of Honolulu Artists and an honorary member of the Morning Music Club. His paintings entered the collections of the Honolulu Museum of Art and the Bishop Museum, and he has been described as Norway's first Impressionist painter. Hurum's career thus stands apart among Norwegian composers of his generation for its dual artistic focus and its unusual geographic trajectory, from the concert halls of Berlin and Oslo to the art world of the Pacific. He died in Honolulu in 1972 at the age of eighty-nine.