Jury's reasoning: In this work, the composer does not hide behind clever artifices and impressive staging. From beginning to end, Olav Berg's concerto for viola and orchestra is an honest and sober account. In many ways, it is about the solo instrument as an individual. With a searching, careful hand, the viola draws out expressive, lyrical phrases. Everything that happens […]
/ 17/03/2017 / codexThe jury's reasoning:
In this work, the composer does not hide behind clever artifices and impressive staging. From beginning to end, Olav Berg's concerto for viola and orchestra is an honest and sober account. In many ways, it is about the solo instrument as an individual. With a searching, careful hand, the viola draws out expressive, lyrical phrases. Everything that happens in the orchestra seems to be derived from this process.
To begin with, and many times Later in the piece, the orchestra forms only a gentle veil of sound around the solo instrument. Subtle effects of light and shadow frame the viola's journey of discovery.
Then at times the orchestral part grows in intensity, either against a bright light or a cutting rhythm, so that it takes over the stage completely, but always with an organic connection to the material that the solo instrument has developed.
There is a perfect match between the character of this work and the character of the viola as a solo instrument in general. The composer also shows a very precise hand with instrumentation. Here, not a note is too little or too much, and even when the whole orchestra is in motion, it never sounds massive, but expressive and poetic.
Olav Berg is not the composer who has stood out the most in Norwegian contemporary music. It is all the more pleasant to give him an EDVARD prize for a work that is so personal and perfect in form, and which we believe will defend its place in the repertoire.