Johan Halvorsen

Johan Halvorsen (15 March 1864 – 4 December 1935) was a Norwegian composer, conductor, and violinist. Life Born in Drammen, he was an accomplished violinist from a very early age and became a prominent figure in Norwegian musical life. He received his musical education in (now Oslo) and Stockholm, and was a concertmaster in Bergen before joining the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. He was a concertmaster in Aberdeen, then a professor of music in Helsinki, and finally became a student once again in Saint Petersburg, Leipzig (with Adolph Brodsky), Berlin, (with Adolf Becker), and Liège (with César Thomson). Returning to Norway in 1893, he worked as conductor of the theatre orchestra at Den Nationale Scene in Bergen and of the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra. He became concertmaster of the Bergen Philharmonic in 1885, and principal conductor in 1893. In 1899 he was appointed conductor of the orchestra at the newly opened National Theatre in Kristiania, a position he held for 30 years until his retirement in 1929. In early 2016, librarians at the University of Toronto announced that they had located the manuscript score of his violin concerto, performed only three times in 1909 and consider