Hvoslef, Ketil

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Hvoslef, Ketil

Violino Solo III (score, small format, and solo violin part / first print)

18,00 

Ketil Hvoslef – Violino Solo III (2013 – rev. 2020)

(b. Bergen, 19 July 1939)

First performance: May 27th 2013 – St. John’s Church, Bergen, by Ricardo Odriozola

only English preface available …

Ketil Hvoslef is the youngest son of Harald Sæverud and Marie Hvoslef. He arrived at a propitious time, since his birth coincided with the completion of Siljustøl, the great mansion in the outskirts of Bergen where the Sæverud family settled and where his father lived until his passing in 1992. It also proved to be a haven during the Nazi invasion of Norway in the Second World War.

Being the son of a great composer, music was naturally very present during his upbringing. He learned to play the piano and the viola and, in his teens, he became heavily involved in Bergen’s jazz and pop music environment, becoming a member of what was, reportedly, Bergen’s first rock band. Hvoslef (who retained the Sæverud surname until his 40th birthday, when he decided to adopt that of his mother) had, however, plans to become a painter and took serious steps in that direction. It was in the Bergen Art Academy that he met the painter Inger Bergitte Flatebø (1938 – 2008), who would become his wife and adopt the Sæverud surname.

With the birth of their first child, Trond, in 1962, Hvoslef realized that he needed to provide for his family and, abandoning his dreams to become either a pop star or a painter, he took an organist’s diploma at the Bergen Music Conservatoire. Upon finishing his studies, he was offered a position as theory teacher at the Conservatoire by its director, the legendary Gunnar Sævig (1924 – 1969).

Hvoslef became a composer almost by accident. In his 25th year he composed a piano concertino for his own satisfaction. Shortly after, his father passed on to him a commission for a woodwind quintet he had no time or inclination to write. Since then Hvoslef has received a fairly steady stream of commissions and his work list counts with some 140 compositions to date. Hvoslef is always motivated by restrictions and has often written for unusual or seemingly “hopeless” instrumental combinations, always using the limitations of the ensemble as a stimulant for his imagination. He has written for large orchestra, for a great variety of chamber ensembles and for solo instruments. He has composed twenty concertos and three operas to date.

He was the Festival Composer in the Bergen International festival in 1990 and has received several prizes such as the Norwegian Composers’ Society’s “work of the year” in four occasions (1978, 1980, 1985 and 1992) and TONO’s Edvard Prisen in 2011.

Hvoslef’s music is characterized by great transparency and by a conscious building of tension achieved by accumulating latent energy. He wants his listeners to lean forward and listen rather than sit back and be lulled into a reverie. Listening to a Hvoslef composition is always an adventure. One never knows what to expect. He stretches sections of the music almost to breaking point and only then introduces a new idea. His music has a classical clarity and transparency and is therefore always easy to follow. Although his highly personal and concentrated language is very much of its time, Hvoslef is not averse to using material that is recognizably tonal (such as major and minor triads) albeit always in a context that sets these familiar sounds in conflict with their surroundings. Rhythm is a very prominent aspect of Hvoslef’s music. Although the vast majority of his production is notated in 4/4 metre, his rhythmical patterns almost never conform to it, always favouring patterns of odd-numbered notes.

Ketil Hvoslef is, without a doubt, one of the greatest composers to emerge from Scandinavia in the second half of the Twentieth Century and one of the truly original masters of our time.

VIOLINO SOLO III is a rare example of a piece Hvoslef wrote of his own accord, that is, without a commission. In 2012 he had written a work for wind band (L’Homme Armée) and found himself with some unused material that he deemed appropriate for a solo violin piece, which he decided to write for me. I had, by that time, loved Hvoslef’s music and played it in several countries for some twenty-four years, so that perhaps qualifies as one of the longest auditions in music history. Joking apart, in a presentation before one of the performances I gave of the piece he said that he considered that I enjoy a challenge, so he wrote this piece for me with that in mind. The piece is, indeed, challenging. Of the three works he has written for solo violin (Violino Solo, 1980; Violino Solo II, 2009 and this one) so far, this one is the most technically demanding.

I gave the first performance of the piece on May 27th 2013 during the Bergen International Festival. Hvoslef revised the piece several times in the following years and I premiered what I believed to be the final version of the piece on February 12th 2018 in a recital at the Grieg Academy in Bergen. After another performance in June 2019 Hvoslef decided that he wanted to make further changes to the piece. The result of this was that he rewrote roughly half of the piece. This final version is the one to be found in this edition.

In Violino solo III Hvoslef adopts a formal approach by which the music evolves from one event or emotional state to the next rather than trying to achieve cohesion by developing and restating material (although a small measure of the latter also takes place). It is a hallmark of this work that Hvoslef frequently uses breath marks (commas) in between short phrases or even individual notes. It is obvious that he is more interested in the intensity of the moment and in the presence of each note than in a Romantic sense of flow. It is up to the listener to “join the dots” and make sense of the piece as a whole.

Known for the strongly rhythmical character of his music, in this work Hvoslef wishes for the performer to take the necessary time in order to allow the music to be fully expressive. Each musical gesture must be given the time to be completed, even if it entails eschewing a steady pulse. Hvoslef has jokingly (or perhaps not; it’s not always easy to tell) said that the most important lesson he learned during his composition studies in his youth was to write “ca.” next to the metronome markings. This remark becomes particularly relevant when dealing with Violino solo III.

The piece begins almost tentatively, as if reluctant to “leave the nest”, unsure of which octave to hang on to. By the bottom of page 1 it has become more self-assured, opening up for the slightly unsettling passage on page 2 where unpredictable, albeit gentle accents seem intent on throwing the two-note (D-Eb) ostinato out of kilter. Without further ado we are invited to a graceful dance (bottom of page 2) with one irate interruption (last system of same page). More unsettling music follows with a typical passage of loud-staccato and soft-legato juxtapositions (tempo change on page 3). At the bottom of page 3 the music becomes gestural, and any sense of pulse becomes hard to discern until a curious process takes place (tempo change on page 4): two pizzicato voices (one static, the other alternating between two notes) cross each other; one becomes louder while the other stays soft before the process is reversed. The listener is made to follow this balancing act closely before two spiralling melodic surges bring the music to eight full measures of sustained intensity (page 5, third system) answered by a sort of echo in the lower octave lasting twelve measures.

What follows is the first properly long melodic line of the piece, beginning at the bottom of page 5 (flautando). Soon, however, this seamless line becomes disturbed, first by a single intruding note (A) then by clusters of four notes. In sharp contrast, the next section (beginning at the bottom of page 6) is played pizzicato and it contains plenty of long silences. This pizzicato music engages in conversation with what could be called the only proper theme of the piece: a melody played tremolo and accompanied by bell-like left-hand pizzicatos, beginning on the fourth system of page 7. Eventually the pizzicato lines gain the upper hand before the bow returns with a nervous theme marked “frettoloso” (hasty) and played ff (bottom of page 8). After so much built-up energy we are led to expect the grand emotional culmination of the piece. However Hvoslef plays with our expectations by making the music suddenly softer each time the theme rises in pitch. This happens three times before we are finally indulged by a long crescendo and a melodic rise finally reaching the high register (5th and 6th systems of page 9). The earlier soft tremolo theme is now played (non tremolo) two and a half octaves higher at full volume, with the pizzicato tolling bells now consigned to the bottom string. Mirroring the increasing resolve of the beginning of the piece, the music now gradually loses heart, descending in both pitch and dynamic, finally reaching the bottom of the instrument. The last impression, however, is an ascending three-note figure (also an echo of the beginning). I had remarked to Hvoslef that all of his solo violin pieces end with the open bottom G string (this was also the case with the original version of Violino solo III). In order to break the pattern he introduced the aforementioned figure. The piece still ends on a G, but two octaves above the open string and played pizzicato in p.

Ricardo Odriozola January 4th 2019 – revised August 2nd 2020

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