Nordiske klassikere: Bjarte Engeset on Rondo Amoroso

As Quarantine time is a perfect time to expand your repertoire, Quarantine Classics provides a series of musicians sharing their favorite Nordic gems. Conductor Bjarte Engeset shares Rondo Amoroso by the norwegian composer Harald Sæverud (1897-1992).

I have clear memories of my mother Bjørg playing the Rondo amoroso for me in my early childhood. My memories of her are brought to life in a special way when I hear this music now. Bringing back memories is one of the many beautiful and sometimes plaintive capacities of music.

Sæverud himself also related this piece to the soul of a child. He dedicated it to his mother, but when asked about how it was created he usually told the following story: One day while sitting at the piano in the living room, letting the fingers touch the piano keys, a little sad melody sounded. One of his three little sons, Sveinung, then asked him: ‘Are you sad, father?’ That started a little conversation between the two, and the music grew out from this. Sæverud felt that a child had found the key for him to hidden melodies. The situation was a turning point for him, his rebirth as a composer. Late in life, when the doubts came and he thought he had made nothing of value, he could whisper to himself, ‘of course very quietly’: ‘You have anyway written your Rondo amoroso’.

Rondo amoroso was published in a collection of short ‘easy’ piano pieces created in 1939, when Harald, Marie and their three little boys had moved into Siljustøl, a unique large home placed in the nature of Fana, outside Bergen, Norway. After writing mainly complex orchestral works Sæverud had now turned to much smaller forms, music that often had only two or three voices. Other pieces from the collection are Småsvein-gangar and Syljetone.

Listen to Rondo Amoroso

Shortly after composing Rondo amoroso Sæverud made an orchestration for oboe, bassoon and strings. The orchestral musicians have always responded with enthusiasm to this music when I have conducted it. Here it is played by the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, an orchestra Sæverud was closely connected to in many ways

Simplicity and naivety are two important facets of music. Edvard Grieg said that naivety was ‘the most beautiful asset’ of an artist. Grieg also had a particular focus on the soul of a child. He wrote more than 20 settings og cradle songs. I have counted them! I am quite sure he was kindled by the memory of Alexandra, the daughter of Nina and Edvard, who died tragically, not much more than one year old.

The fascination of childhood is also very clear in for example the norwegian painter Nicolai Astrup’s art. He decided to use the sketches and paintings from his childhood as base for most of his later work, concretely using his childhood drawings. In this way he could make his pictures have the honesty, directness and openness of a child’s perception.

Astrup’s pictures also has a strong and direct connection to nature. This was also the case for Sæverud and Grieg. This is not nature as shown in sunny pictures of a tourist brochure, but a direct and intuitive sensing of all the facets of nature.

Sæverud’s home city Bergen became the city of my first years of music studies, where I got conducting lessons from the principal conductor of the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra at that time, Karsten Andersen. The first time I met Sæverud I had mistakenly taken his seat in the fourth row of the Grieg Hall, after the intermission at a concert. I had to stand up while everybody was looking at us, and in his very characteristic voice he told me: ‘You have warmed my seat!’.  I have later spent much time studying his music. Last week I had a video meeting with the class of conducting students with focus on Sæverud and his music. We listened to Rondo amoroso and other of his works. Kjempeviseslåtten (The Ballad of Revolt) is probably his best known composition. We had prepared it for a concert some weeks ago, one of the first concerts to be cancelled here in Norway because of the pandemic. Here is a live recording of Stokowski conducting it with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra in 1953.

Not long after Sæverud had composed Rondo amoroso the second world war started. During those dark years he composed the three so called ‘war symphonies’ and also The Ballad of Revolt.

I think Rondo amoroso has a strong connection to the music of the classic era and the early romantism, to composers like Haydn and Schubert. The phrases are beautifully balanced and connect to each other much in the style of the classics.

Nowadays, being mostly at home because of the quarantine, I listen quite much to Schubert, his chamber music, songs and piano music. His Fantasia in F minor, D.940 (Op. posth. 103) starts in quite similar atmosphere as the Rondo amoroso.

Schubert wrote really sophisticated music, at the same time being music with a touching simplicity. If I was asked to choose a piece of inspiration from other countries than the Nordic, I would probably have picked the heartwarming ‘Entr'acte No. 2’ from Rosamunde by Schubert. I will always remember the abundance of fresh flowers I saw on Schubert’s grave when visiting it outside Vienna. They were witnesses of how Schubert reaches the hearts of people today. As much as I love the immense richness of the colors of the orchestra, I get much joy and inspiration from “stripped down” music where the quality of the melodies, chords and form is at focus. I mean music where nothing is hidden, written in the ambition of honesty more than in the ambition of fame. Rondo amoroso is for me an example of this.

I hope you like it!

Bjarte Engeset

Buy Score (Piano version)

Conductor Bjarte Engeset gained his Diploma, at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki in 1989, where he studied with professor Jorma Panula. In 1991 he was chosen as a member of the Tanglewood Music Center Seminar of conductors where the teachers included Seiji Ozawa, Gustav Meier, Simon Rattle, Marek Janowski and others.

Engeset has been in demand to perform concerts, tours and CD recordings with leading orchestras worldwide and has been pivotal in the scientific research and editorial work within Norway's ongoing "Music Heritage" Project, especially the orchestra music of Edvard Grieg, Johan Svendsen, Ludvig Irgens-Jensen and Geirr Tveitt.