Johan Halvorsen

Johan (August) Halvorsen,
(b Drammen, 15 March 1864; d Oslo, 4 Dec 1935). Norwegian composer, conductor and violinist.

At the age of 15 he went to Christiania (now Oslo), where for four years he played the violin in theatre and operetta ensembles. He was to become one of Norway’s greatest violin virtuosi, although he received violin instruction only for short periods, his teachers including Jakob Lindberg in Stockholm (1884–5) and Adolph Brodsky in Leipzig (1886–8). Halvorsen worked as a violin teacher and concert master in Bergen (1885–6) and Aberdeen (1888–9) before moving to Helsinki, where he became a professor of violin at the Helsinki Music Institute in 1889 and worked as a chamber musician. Among his colleagues was Busoni, and the large circle of musicians in Helsinki prompted him to begin composing. In 1893 he was offered the positions of conductor at the theatre and of the semi-professional symphony orchestra in Bergen. He rapidly became Norway’s leading conductor after Svendsen, and in 1899 he was appointed conductor at the new national theatre in Christiania, a position he held until 1929. As well as stage music, often his own, he regularly conducted symphony concerts at the theatre, and more than 25 operas were staged under his musical direction.

As a composer Halvorsen was mainly self-taught, apart from some lessons in counterpoint from Albert Becker in Berlin (1893). His compositions develop the national Romantic tradition of his friends Grieg and Svendsen, but his was a distinctive style marked by brilliant orchestration inspired by the French Romantic composers.