Bjørn Stenvaag
Bjørn started playing the piano when he was 7, but almost immediately a problem appeared; as a child, his curious mind could not understand the point of playing music someone else had written! He later realized that he was going to be a composer, not a performer.
- Bjørn Stenvaag has been studying composition at the Norwegian State Academy of Music with, among others, Olav Anton Thommesen and Ragnar Söderlind. Although he play the piano, he have come to love the cello very deeply. In his eyes the cello is “The King of Expression,” above all other instruments. Bjørn identify the sound and tone of the cello as the voice he wish to speak with in his music. The cello, with its wide range and innumerable “faces,” is to Stenvaag the only instrument that fully works in ensembles built on a single kind of instrument, i.e. cello quartets.
Bjørn Stegvaag often use the picture of man in nature in his musical landscapes. “I have powerful feelings about nature, and I believe that nature represents everything we know and don’t know, both in the world and within ourselves. But in nature everything is related. My piece for 4 celli, Ved Nyingen (By the Fire) was written in my cabin in the Norwegian mountains, near Lake Femunden. It is based on a man’s changing mind while sitting by the campfire” he says.