BIT20 Ensemble

Festival Academy of Bergen

No composer has influenced the world of music quite like Johann Sebastian Bach. In this concert, the resonance of Bach’s music is felt – and reimagined – by a new generation of composers and performers. Bach’s E major Prelude almost entirely shapes Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Fog, written for the architect Frank Gehry and played here directly after Bach’s work.

BIT20 Ensemble – one of the Nordic region’s leading contemporary music ensembles – is joined by fast-rising local violinist Olga Melby Larsson for a concert which looks backwards and forwards with an evening of music, old and new. Two composers – Jonas Skaarud and Martin Hirsti-Kvam – from the Festival Academy’s mentor programme Premiere both present fascinating refractions of the musical universes of composers such as Robert Schumann and Charpentier.

New will meet old also in Hans Abrahamsen’s tender reflection on Bach’s chorale Befiehl du deine Wege using fragments of a work by another Danish composer Poul Ruders, while music by Schumann and Bach under Olga Melby Larsson’s nimble fingers gives further context.

Bjarni Frímann Bjarnason conducts BIT20 Ensemble in a performance that will bind time and centuries together in the atmospheric surroundings of the church Korskirken.

Image from a concert with BIT20 Ensemble and conductor Bjarni Frímann Bjarnason in Håkonshallen during the 2025 Bergen International Festival. Photo: Helene Myksvoll.

Supported by

Contributors

• BIT20 Ensemble

• Bjarni Frímann Bjarnason conductor

• Olga Melby Larsson violin

• Martin Hirsti-Kvam composer

• Jonas Skaarud composer

Works

• Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750)
  Befiehl du deine Wege, BWV 272, arr. Hans Abrahamsen

• Jonas Skaarud (1990–)
  (which is not reluctant, or of it is, it is no longer important 
  World Premiere

• Robert Schumann (1810–1856)
  From Violin Concerto in D minor, WoO 23
  2. Langsam. Soloist: Olga Melby Larsson 

• Martin Hirsti-Kvam (1991–)
  La Petite Cathédrale for sinfonietta 
  World Premiere 

• Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1643–1704)
  From Le Reniement de Sant Pierre, H 424
  3. Tunc respexit Jesus Petrum

• Martin Hirsti-Kvam (1991–)
  Four Part Motet 

• Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750)
  From Partita for Violin no. 3 in E major, BWV 1006
  1. Preludio. Soloist: Olga Melby Larsson

• Esa-Pekka Salonen (1958–)
  Fog