Johan
Dalene

Johan Dalene began playing the violin at the age of four and made his public debut at a concert three years later. Since then, he has dazzled audiences in major international music venues and won awards for his musical interpretations and infectious passion for his art form. 

“A talent worth noting” is how Leif Ove Andsnes has described this young violinist.  

A sense of spring 

Christian Ihle Hadland will be accompanying on the piano and the programme features five romantic works for violin and piano. It will be spring in September when the duo performs Beethoven’s Violin Sonata no. 5 in F Major, also known as the Spring Sonata, and Lili Boulanger’s D’un matin de printemps. 

“The monster is finished,” wrote Francis Poulenc on completing the draft of his violin sonata, composed in memory of the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca. If you listen carefully, you can hear that Poulenc has been inspired by several famous works. At one point, he has borrowed an oboe theme from the Tchaikovsky opera Eugen Onegin, while references to Rachmaninov can be heard elsewhere. 

Musical romances 

“A woman must not desire to compose,” said the pianist Clara Schumann. She ended up proving herself very wrong. The three romantic works to her name were received with great enthusiasm by both kings and critics and caused many to later lament that Clara’s career became subordinate to that of her husband Robert. 

The concert concludes with Grieg’s colourful Violin Sonata no. 3 in C Minor. The work is dedicated to the German painter Franz von Lenbach, who painted portraits of Grieg and his wife Nina while in Rome in 1884.