Norwegian Radio Orchestra, Miguel Harth-Bedoya, Tine Thing Helseth - Variations over Variations (2017) Hi-Res

The Norwegian Radio Orchestra, featuring soloist star trumpeter Tine Thing Helseth, with brand new Norwegian music! Alfred Janson, Knut Vaage, Maja Ratkje and Jan Erik Mikalsen have written for the orchestra, including a brand new trumpet concerto. Variations over Variations presents four Norwegian composers and their works, performed and commissioned by The Norwegian Radio Orchestra, under their Chief Conductor, the Grammy-nominated and Emmy Award-winner Miguel Harth-Bedoya.

Variations over Variations is a great snapshot of contemporary Norwegian orchestral music. The four works enters into a dialogue with existing music and a music history that binds them together, in very different ways. Some places musical quotes open up a door to the Norwegian, other places it re-contextualises the idea of a national music. Tine is featured on the title track in Janson’s trumpet concerto ‘Variations over variations on a Norwegian folk tune’, a variation over Edvard Grieg’s ‘Ballad in G minor’. Ratkje’s ‘Paragraf 112’ expands the orchestra’s ordinary timbre and establishes a vulnerable openness which later turns darker and more dangerous. Mikalsen’s folk-inspired ‘Songr’ moves between grand orchestral roars and fragile chords, while Vaage’s ‘Mylder’ could be described as a symphonic internet where the surface seems strangely familiar.