The Norwegian Chamber Orchestra Will Perform Beethoven's 5th This Weekend

The Norwegian Chamber Orchestra will perform both Beethoven and Bryce Dessner, in addition to music by Fanny Mendelssohn and Missy Mazzoli, later this month. The performance is on 10 November.

Beethoven tells us – without words – how a sense of fatalism can take root within us, whether this pertains to our own personal challenges or everything happening around us. His fifth symphony also spans from the exacerbating desperation of the famous opening motif to the most energetic optimism of the final movement.  

Bryce Dessner is best known as a guitarist in the rock band The National. But he is also a brilliant composer and has written and dedicated his violin concerto to the artistic director of the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra Pekka Kuusisto. Dessner is also fascinated by fate, in this case the notion of a pilgrimage and the experience of everything around us becoming more intense by putting one foot in front of the other on the ground.  

The overture that opens the concert is the work of Fanny Mendelssohn and the only known work she wrote for the orchestra alone. As the older sister of Felix, she inspired her brother and helped shape much of his musical originality. But she received little credit for her work, both this one and many of the other pieces she wrote. Fanny is said to have been one of the greatest pianists of her time, in addition to also having conducted her brother’s orchestral works. Through her work, she paved the way for today’s female composers. 

Missy Mazzoli is one of them and Oslo Opera House audiences know her from the production of The Listeners in 2022. As a prologue to Dessner’s violin concerto, artistic leader for the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra Pekka Kuusisto is presenting Vespers for amplified violin and electronic soundtrack, for solo violin and electronic sampling. 

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