Theme 2026

ABRAHAM

Abraham. A dark, resounding name . The ur-patriarch and origin of three world religions. The very floor beneath our feet of myths, images, and moral ideas, laid out like a herringbone parquet rather than parallel boards.

In common they share is a single God, monotheistic, even if the Christian faith maintains the Trinity. There are strict commandments, followed by varying degrees of leeway; grace. There is also great variation in how concrete these commandments are, both in the texts themselves and in the way they are carried out. How should animals be slaughtered, what may be eaten? Is it sufficient to think good thoughts? The three; Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, have lived and still live side by side, both in the East and in the West.

There has been much war and cruelty, and still is. But there has also been exchange, inspiration and fascination. As a festival of Western classical music, Christianity is of course omnipresent. We notice it neither more nor less than the fish notices the water. Bach stands, also in this context, like a pillar; he gave his God the glory for every work he composed: Soli Deo Gloria, he wrote after the double bar line.

The presence of Jews in Christian Europe is fascinating. Their identity has remained strangely intact in spite of millennia of assimilation. They have been subjected to terrible things; perhaps that has helped to temper and harden their identity? The Jewish contribution to science and art, not least music, has been remarkable. In this year’s festival we present several works by prominent Jewish composers, some of them making specific use of Jewish inflection and tradition, such as Bloch and Golijov. Golijov’s «Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind» is strongly influenced by klezmer, and we have found its perfect interpreter in the clarinetist Chen Halevi. Other Jewish composers have become part of the Western canon without necessarily thematizing what is specifically Jewish, such as Mahler and Mendelssohn. Both converted to Christianity, Mahler to Catholicism, Mendelssohn to Protestantism, something we hear clearly in his Second Piano Trio, when he introduces Bach’s chorale «Vor deinen Thron tret ich hiermit».»Their conversion was probably mostly pragmatic, but they both lived in an imaginative world that could be as compatible with Christianity as with Judaism. Mendelssohn’s piano trios will be performed by the magnificent Leonore Trio: Gemma Rosefield, Ben Nabarro, and Timothy Horton, whom we will also experience in other contexts during the festival. 

We also have a concert dedicated to Catholicism, featuring Messiaen and Bruckner. We know Bruckner as a symphonist, but he wrote a large, wonderful string quintet, which will be performed with the phenomenal Karen Gomyo as first violin.

Islam in Western art music is largely marked by exoticism. Edward Said gave this gaze a name of its own, Orientalism, not an unambiguously positive one. In Mozart’s operas we find theatrical archetypes such as «the Angry Turk», often portrayed by an extremely deep bass voice, a special fach: the Osmin bass. «Alla Turca» is a character that Mozart played with in many contexts, raw, folky, and catchy. We have a dedicated program devoted to this, where we will hear the excellent Eirik Stømner perform perhaps Mozart’s most famous piano sonata, as well as the Turkish composer Fazıl Say’s cheerful and virtuosic paraphrase on it.

Islam er mye forbundet med det arabiske, og dette har flettet seg sammen med det europeiske i særlig grad gjennom maurerne i Spania. Dette finner vi igjen i mye spansk musikk, med orientalske toneganger, noe vi får høre blant annet i konserten med tittel «1001 natt».  Også i sigøynermusikk har vi beslektet tonalitet, og dette får vi eksempler på i programmet Dervisj. I dette programmet får vi også møte Sandefjords egen, nylig hjemflyttede sopran, Margrethe Fredheim, sammen med Trygve Seim i Rumi Songs, Trygves fortolkning av sufistisk poesi, sprunget ut av persisk islam.

This year we have taken a new approach with Fjord Festival Strings, our youthful chamber orchestra. Many of the musicians are the same as from the beginning, and they have grown in age and wisdom. We now have eight of these not-quite-so-young-anymore musicians with us; many of them now hold leading positions as concertmasters and principal players in professional orchestras in the Nordic countries. They will still appear together in certain contexts under the direction of the excellent Per Kristian Skalstad, but this year we will also, to a large extent, present them individually, as soloists and chamber musicians. 

We look forward to presenting all this wonderful music, performed by some of today’s finest musicians from near and far!

Lars Anders Tomter

Artistic Director