Northern high-lights: Bergen International Festival

Once a year, the Norwegian city of Bergen welcomes visitors from all over the world for its annual Bergen International Festival. Running from 24 May to 7 June, the festival is the largest curated festival for music and performing arts across all the Nordic countries and, now in its 71st edition, the festival is set to delight audiences in Bergen once more under the leadership of new director Lars Petter Hagen.

Hagen joined the festival almost exactly a year ago, just before its 2022 edition. Speaking to him via video chat from Bergen where he is getting ready to launch the festival in just under two weeks’ time, I asked the composer how planning his first festival as director has played out. ‘The staff did a great job with the festival in 2022, but that also meant that the 2023 edition was a little bit behind schedule. That has been challenging, but also very, very fun, because I could really take complete ownership of the programme, I could make it my own.’ When it comes to gaining familiarity with the organisation and its audiences he’s set to serve, Hagen wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty: ‘I did different jobs to learn as much as possible about the different aspects of the festival. I did everything from working with the volunteers to selling tickets, and even lifting pianos.’

This proactive, energetic approach seems quite out of character for a composer whose own music has been described by writer Rob Young as an art of ‘resignation’. A self-described melancholic, Hagen finds that his more reflective approach provides the perfect foil for the joyous, emotional side of music-making celebrated throughout the festival. ‘For me, music is about a lot of things. Of course, it’s about celebration, but it's also about reflection and contemplation. That's what makes the other side possible, the celebration and the direct emotional outburst and all the things that we love in our opera and our big symphonies.’

©Victoria Stevens

Of course, Hagen isn’t working alone. Alongside production, marketing and administration teams and a team of volunteers, he’s keen to collaborate with the local community to ensure the festival is deeply rooted in the city of Bergen. ‘I think that a festival becomes more interesting internationally when it also has a strong local connection and identity. It’s crucial to have this dialogue between the past and the present, but also the local and the international.’ This practice is something the composer perfected when working on Norwegian contemporary music festival Ultima, which achieved the highest audience ratings in its 25-year history under Hagen’s artistic direction. ‘The question I always asked when I was an Ultima and now in Bergen is, “why?”. Why should people come here to listen to this music and not go to Paris next week where they can hear the same artist?’ Interrogating a festival’s raison d’ être is not an easy practice and Hagen notes that he faced some opposition before audience numbers began to climb but, he presses, ‘it's a way of thinking that creates some interesting energy.’

As well as encouraging artists on the programme to take that same interrogative approach, Hagen believes this method also opens up opportunities for audiences. ‘People who just love baroque music can listen to Isabelle Faust and Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, but in the same hall a couple of days before we also have (Festival Exhibition artist and composer) Camille Norment. You can go to one event and be happy with that particular experience, or you can go to both and see them in connection. This way of thinking opens up programmes to people. I always find it inspiring to find new perspectives on existing work by making juxtapositions with new work, different genres, different artistic perspectives.’

Isabelle Faust will join forces with Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin for a concert on 4 June ©Felix Broede

As a curator, Hagen takes advantage of the fertile ground of the creative city of Bergen by finding programming inspiration from the musical community there. ‘I try to be a good listener and I try to listen for urgency. For me, curating is very much about finding a sense of urgency and trying to see what's important here and now - what does this festival really need?’ This year’s classical offering is complemented by a carefully chosen programme of talks and performances of different genres from Australian circus group, Circa (which Gardner is particularly keen to see) to Icelandic electropop musician and 2021 Eurovision competitor Daði Freyr. Hagen is keen to point out how these genres of performances complement the festival’s holistic approach: ‘For me, it's quite obvious that classical music is not in a vacuum. Classical music is an expression of who we are and who we are is not unrelated to popular culture. It's a more aesthetical, philosophical way to approach programming.’

'Classical music is an expression of who we are and who we are is not unrelated to popular culture.' Lars Petter Hagen is proud of the festival's non-classical programming, which this year includes Icelandic electropop artist Daði Freyr ©Stefanie Schmid Rincon

Front and centre in this year’s programme is the Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen who, in her role as artist in residence will give performances throughout the festival, most notably alongside Sir Bryn Terfel and Freddie De Tommaso in the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra’s sold-out concert version of Tosca. Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra chief conductor Edward Gardner has designed the orchestra’s festival offering around Davidsen as a ‘focal point’ from which the rest of the programme can flow, including a monumental performance of Verdi’s Requiem.

The Requiem is set to be a celebration of Bergen and its people, with the orchestra’s educational outreach efforts taking centre stage. Alongside the Bergen Philharmonic’s Youth Orchestra, Gardner lists ‘a whole ranking of young choirs, from toddlers right up to teens and into the Bergen Philharmonic Choir.’ As well as delivering the orchestra’s usual high standard of performance, Gardner is keen to highlight the example this concert will offer for the city’s emerging talent. ‘This was an opportunity for us all to work together on a really big piece and give the people who may be a bit young to have experienced it the opportunity to experience it being done in the best possible way.’ He’s completely on board with Hagen’s vision for the festival and its impact on the community; ‘I think when the festival's done right, and I trust Lars Petter 100 per cent to do it right, it can feel like it's the culmination of what's happened artistically within the city over the year.’

​‘I love having this sense that I can breathe around my music-making, and that's what I get from working in Bergen.' Edward Gardner performs with the Bergen Philharmonic ©Helge Skodvin​​

For a city with a population of just under 300,000 people and roughly the same size as Northampton, Bergen’s classical music scene is remarkable. It was one of the elements which originally enticed Gardner to take up the role of chief conductor with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra in 2015, a position he will step down from at the end of the 2023/24 season to take up music directorship of the Norwegian Opera and Ballet in Oslo. He notes, ‘It's extraordinary because the city is tiny, and yet we can do all these world-class things. When it's going well, it feels like you're working in a festival, even in the winter darkness, because there's such a positive energy.’

While for most of the year the Bergen Philharmonic reaches global audiences by venturing out on tour, the festival offers a valuable opportunity for audiences to see the players on their own turf. ‘It's bringing the outside world to us,’ Gardner notes. The conductor’s own career now straddles the North Sea, having taken up the role of principal conductor with the London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO) in 2021. This puts him in the unique position of enjoying the best of both worlds when it comes to schedules and training styles. ‘The way we work in the UK is absolutely athletic and you've got to be completely on it. There's no time for experimenting, you've got to really do it because these musicians have so few rehearsals, and the money is always tight to put a project together properly. The LPO can prepare the most gargantuan pieces breathtakingly quickly. That's a wonderful way of making music, it's exhilarating, it's exciting, it's fast-paced.’ In the Nordic countries, however, it’s an entirely different story. ‘I love having this sense that I can breathe around my music-making, and that's what I get from working in Bergen. I feel I have more time to think and to breathe.’

I doubt there will be much time to breathe between festival events either, with Hagen’s programme packed with performances showcasing everything the region and its global visitors have to offer. Festivalgoers can take in a range of concerts all over the city, from large-scale orchestral performances to smaller concerts in intimate venues like the house of Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg. Not only a composer and festival director, but a marketing expert too, Hagen saves me the trouble of summing it up: ‘It’s an eccentric mix of extraordinary music and extraordinary experiences in extraordinary surroundings.’

The Bergen International Festival will take place in the Norwegian city of Bergen from 24 May to 7 June. You can find the full programme here.