Hjalmar Borgström

er of musical motifs with semantic interpretations which support the subject matter of the
work. The most important aspect of Borgstrøm’s composition is nonetheless not so much
these interpretations, but rather the musical joy of its rhythms, textures, tunes and thematic
development. This work is shorter and clearly less pretentious than Jesus i Gethsemane.
In the present recording the gong (tam-tam) has been replaced with the bass drum (gran
cassa) for acoustic reasons.
Concerto for violin and orchestra in G major, opus 25, is a classically structured concerto in
three movements. As mentioned earlier the mood in this work is much brighter and musically
livelier than in the two symphonic poems. The concerto is around thirty-five minutes
long; the first movement is nearly fifteen minutes, the slower, lyrical second movement nine
minutes, and the finale eleven. The work was composed in 1914 and belongs to Borgstrøm’s
late period. The concert was premiered at “Den norske musikkfest” in 1914, with Leif Halvorsen
playing the solo violin. Furthermore, the NRK archives contain a recording of the
concerto from 17 September 1964 in a performance by the Musikselskabet Harmonien; soloist
was Håkon Guldbrandsen.
The violin concerto belongs genre-wise with the piano concerto from 1910, the D minor
symphony from 1912 and the piano quintet from 1919. It is known that Borgstrøm had a
written programme for the D minor symphony (it is mentioned in his article “My D minor
symphony”, 1912), and probably also for the piano quintet. The interesting thing about
this is that Borgstrøm probably conceived and shaped the course of his music in very similar
ways, whether the work was classical and purely instrumental or a literary inspired
symphonic poem. In both instances he strove to write music in which themes and motifs,
harmonic and textural progressions, characteristic use of instruments and figures could be
combined in dramatic and meaningful musical development. He wanted to give his music
a narrative voice.
13