Grappa musikkforlag Torleif Torgersen

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Torleif Torgersen

Biography

Torleif Torgersen is born in Bergen and made his debut in Oslo in 1992. He studied with Einar Steen-Nøkleberg, Eva Knardahl and Lazar Berman at the Norwegian Academy of Music and with Liisa Pohjola at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. He received his Diploma in 1993 and joined the MiN-ensemble in Northern Norway the same year. With this sinfonietta type ensemble he has since toured in Norway and Europe and made several CD recordings, also of works composed especially for him.

His solo debut CD from 1995 with works by the Norwegian composers Fartein Valen and Lasse Thoresen (Simax PSC1105) was nominated for a Norwegian Grammy. He has also recorded the complete piano works of Norwegian composer Klaus Egge (PSC1131), a recording that was prepared while staying as a resident artist at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Canada in 1996-97. He has performed at a number of international festivals among them the Berliner Festwochen, St. Petersburg festival and the Prague Festival.

Since 2005 Torleif Torgersen has performed with violinist Shlomo Mintz in concerts in most of Europe as well as Israel, Japan and South Amerika. Torgersen has also performed with conductors including Karsten Andersen Nicholas Carthy, Alf Årdal, Arvid Engegård and Hakan Sensoy. As a performer on historical instruments Torleif Torgersen has held many concerts and lectures. In addition to lessons with Liv Glaser he has also has taken part in numerous workshops with Malcolm Bilson and Bart van Oort. Since 2002 Torleif Torgersen is an associate professor at the Grieg Academy in Bergen.

June 2011

Torleif Torgersen

Discography

Carl Arnold Piano Works

07.10.2011

German composer and virtuoso pianist Carl Arnold played the most vital part in establishing a professional Norwegian musical life. Yet his own works fell victim to a growing national fervor in Norway. The emergence of composers such as Brahms, Liszt and Wagner soon put his music out of vogue in Germany. But now the time has finally come for the music of Carl Arnold (1794-1873).
Thoresen & Valen Piano Music

17.04.1995

This disc brings us the meetings with the instrument of two central Norwegian composers illustrating the way in which they have with complete success made it fall in with their musical intentions. For both Fartein Valen (1887-1952) and Lasse Thoresen (b. 1949), the pianoforte is their chosen instrument but in spite of this, solo works appear only occasionally among their opus numbers. It is as composers in the larger formats they have won their positions in Norway's musical landscape. Indeed it is in light of this that these compositions for solo pianoforte are particularly interesting as compact an just as significant aestethic works. Cleansed of instrumentation's outward elegance and glamour, the very substance of their ceative endeavour is carved out with pitiless clarity.
Klaus Egge Piano Music

24.09.1999

Klaus Egge (1906-79) apporached classic art music by way of folk music - and saw it as something exotic and singular. Thus he understood how the techniques of classic art music could assist him in developing the folk muisc which comprised his original musical identity. For Egge, the way in which the music was constructed was always an inherently more compelling imperative than folklore, which emphasized the essentially retrogressive aspects of folk music.