BIT20 Ensemble
Festival Academy of Bergen
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Back to the future of music history.
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.
Molly Turner 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.
Dirigent Molly Turner. Foto: Alex Markow Martin Hirsti Kvam Jonas Skaarud. Foto: Radostina Ivanova BIT20 Ensemble. Foto: Thor Brødreskift BIT20 Ensemble – Bára Gísladóttir, i Håkonshallen. Foto: Helene Myksvoll
Supported by
Contributors
BIT20 Ensemble
Molly Turner 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 AbrahamsenJonas Skaarud (1990–)
(which is not reluctant, or if it is, it is no longer important
World PremiereRobert Schumann (1810–1856)
From Violin Concerto in D minor, WoO 23
2. Langsam. Soloist: Olga Melby LarssonMartin Hirsti-Kvam (1991–)
La Petite Cathédrale for sinfonietta
World PremiereMarc-Antoine Charpentier (1643–1704)
From Le Reniement de Sant Pierre, H 424
3. Tunc respexit Jesus Petrum, arr. Martin Hirsti-KvamMartin Hirsti-Kvam (1991–)
Four Part MotetJohann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750)
From Partita for Violin no. 3 in E major, BWV 1006
1. Preludio. Soloist: Olga Melby LarssonEsa-Pekka Salonen (1958–)
Fog
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(which is not reluctant, or if it is, it is no longer important
(which is not reluctant, or if it is, it is no longer important) takes as its point of departure Bach’s chorale Befiehl du deine Wege. The chorale collapses and crumbles within the ensemble: notes are erased and replaced by silence or noise, smeared into clouds of sound, fragmented and distilled until only simple melodic lines or repeated chords remain. The song lingers as a fragile background: the musicians hum softly, while recordings of the composer’s own voice are projected through homemade loudspeakers.
Jonas Lie Skaarud
La petite cathedrale (II)
La petite cathedrale (II) is the second piece I have written based on some samples of the large organ in Oslo Cathedral. While the first piece used the accordion as the “little organ”, which plays together with its grandiose big brother, here I use a composite “organ” of harmonica, bird whistles and “ordinary” instruments. The organ samples are played through a small speaker, which is filtered through the percussionist’s gran cassa. The organ material is based on part of the second movement of Robert Schumann’s Violin Concerto from 1853. Organ samples played by Marcus André Berg.
Martin Hirsti-Kvam
Four part motet
In this work, the musicians pick up prepared string instruments and begin to play a skewed Chaconne based on a work by the French Baroque composer Jean-Henri D'anglebert. Gradually, a sampled vocal quartet based on the last movement of Charpentier’s motet Le Reniement de Saint Pierre (1679) begins to reveal itself through the noisy cracks of the prepared instruments, and the musicians enter into a dialogue with the sampled vocal quartet with their instruments and voices. Vocal samples sung by Eirik Krokfjord and Ditte Marie Bræin.
Martin Hirsti-Kvam
