University of Toronto’s Music Library, which is home to Canada’s largest music research collection, has uncovered a Violin Concerto that was thought lost for over 100-years.
It turns out the score – donated to the Library in 1963 – and was misfiled amongst the thousands of regular performance manuscripts in the Library archive located in the basement of the U of T Faculty of Music. It was never seen again, until now.
The Concerto, written by the Norwegian composer, conductor and violinist Johan Halvorsen (1864-1935), was first premiered by the Canadian violinist Kathleen Parlow (1890-1963) in Holland on August 14, 1909. It was only performed two more times under the baton of the conductor, and as never published.
The score landed in the possession of the library in 1963 as part of Parlow’s personal archive that was donated to the Library after she died in Toronto. The archive included correspondence, photographs, and an extensive set of scores, which included the long-lost concerto. Staff members mistakenly filed in their regular performance collection where it sat for 53 years.
In a statement released by U of T, Acting Head Librarian Suzanne Meyers Sawa, she said, “We are delighted that the Halvorsen violin concerto has been found. We are so happy to be a part of the restoration of this work to the repertoire, and we look forward to participating in the symposium next summer where we will hear the piece performed for the first time in more than a century!”
Violinist Henning Kraggerud will perform the 21st-century premiere of the concerto under the direction of Bjarte Engeset in Stavanger, Norway in July 2016 as part of the International Musicological Society’s annual conference.
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