Alma Serafin Kraggerud

with Natallia Papova

Virtuoso- and Norwegian Soloist Prize-winner Alma Serafin Kraggerud comes to Håkonshallen with pianist Natallia Papova and music that lets her Stradivarius sing.

The violin is said to be an extension of the voice. Edvard Grieg’s friend Émile Sauret understood this when he arranged I love thee and Solveig’s Song as only a violin virtuoso could. So did the pioneering Amy Beach, whose Romance lets the violin sing at the top of its range, earning her admiration and respect in the male-dominated music world of late 19th-century America.

Schubert and Tchaikovsky gave the violin many memorable melodies, and Schubert even used one of his own songs, Sei mir gegrüsst, in his great Fantasy in C major, composed while he lay feverish, beset by hallucinations and awaiting death.

Times of crisis can unleash great creative energy, and in the midst of the pandemic, Missy Mazzoli found inspiration in Milton’s poetry and Bach’s timeless musical figures to express the restless loneliness we all felt that spring. Mazzoli’s work, Hail, Horrors, Hail, was premiered online by Jennifer Koh as part of the Alone Together project in 2020.

So now, when the young rising star’s Stradivarius sounds within the walls of Håkonshallen, we may allow ourselves to dream of a bright future.

Image: Alma Serafin Kraggerud. Photo: Nikolaj Lund