Johan Halvorsen (1864–1935) was a Norwegian composer and violinist. His best-known works today are Entry of the Boyars and Bergensiana (variations on the hymn of the city of Bergen), along with his Passacaglia and Sarabande (duos for violin and viola based on themes by George Frideric Handel).
He wrote a lot of music performed in plays at the National Theatre in Oslo, where he conducted the pit orchestra 1899–1929. In the last decade of his life he finished somewhat belatedly three symphonies and two Norwegian rhapsodies in the romantic and nationalistic style of Edvard Grieg and Johan Svendsen.
Halvorsen considered his Norwegian Fairy Tale Pictures to be one of his best works. The suite is colourful and vividly programmatic, drawn from music that Halvorsen had written for a children’s comedy.
The third movement is inspired by White Bear King Valemon, a fairy tale about an unusual mythical creature – neither a polar bear, nor an albino – wooing the real king’s three daughters in succession and being successful at the third attempt.
“The White Bear took the princess on his back, walking farther than anyone could imagine. When they reached the woods, he asked her if she had ever been seated more softly and seen more clearly. ‘No, never,’ she replied. ‘Then you are the right one,’ he said. [...] The White Bear stayed away during daytime but kept her company at night, when he turned into a man.”
The fairy tale is one of the most eventful and imaginative of its kind, involving a witch and her demise before the spell is lifted. Now the White Bear finally becomes a human being permanently, thus allowing the couple to marry and return to his sumptuous castle.
Halvorsen arranged the suite for large orchestra and had it printed in 1923. However, the wind band version has been arranged from pit orchestra manuscript parts now in the Norwegian National Library.
The sound clip is computer generated using sampled sounds (AI). Transcriptions and descriptions are not AI-generated.
Set contains one score and one copy of each part, as download or on paper. Copying allowed by acquiring band for their performances only. Additional copies may be obtained from the J. W. Pepper webshop.
The suite consists of: I. Peik, The Princess, and The Giant Troll | More II. Dance of the Troll Maidens | More III. The Princess Riding on the Bear IV. Entry of Trolls into the Blue Mountain | More V. Dance of the Little Trolls | More
Johan Halvorsen (1864–1935) was a Norwegian composer and violinist. His best-known works today are Entry of the Boyars and Bergensiana (variations on the hymn of the city of Bergen), along with his Passacaglia and Sarabande (duos for violin and viola based on themes by George Frideric Handel).
