On this CD the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor Rolf Gupta perform the complete works to date by the contemporary composer Lars Petter Hagen whose imaginative music has gained him high regard especially in his native Norway. The Hardanger fiddle part in the concerto “To Zeitblom” is taken by rising star Gjermund Larsen.

Norwegian composer Lars Petter Hagen was born in 1975. His music has been performed by many of the world’s top modern music groups and orchestras, including Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, Ensemble Modern, the Oslo Philharmonic, and the SWR Symphony Orchestra. In addition to instrumental, vocal and electronic music, he also works with sound-installations and music for stage and film.

“Norwegian Archives” was written for the Donaueschingen festival in 2005, and is a 5 movement piece for chamber orchestra and electronics. The concerto “To Zeitblom” features an improvising solo Hardanger fiddle and was premiered at the same festival in 2011. In “Tveitt-Fragments” Hagen builds his music on bits of burned score pages found in the ruins after the fire on the Tveitt farm in 1970, which is said to have destroyed more than 300 of the composer’s works. “The Artist’s Despair...” reflects on the situation of the symphony orchestra post-Mahler. Also included is the “Funeral March over Edvard Grieg”, for Chamber group and an “off-stage” symphony orchestra.