This year’s Carl Prize for Composer of the Year – Large Ensemble goes to Thomas Agerfeldt Olesen for his Violin Concerto.
The Carl Prize, established in 2013, celebrates outstanding achievements by Danish composers and songwriters, bringing attention to the creative voices behind the music.
The work was commissioned by the Danish National Symphony Orchestra and the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, and written for violinist Simone Lamsma, who gave the world premiere in Copenhagen before bringing the concerto to Vancouver.
The concerto forms part of the Danish National Symphony Orchestra’s multi-year initiative to commission new violin concertos by Danish composers. Alongside works by Rune Glerup and Søren Nils Eichberg, the project highlights a new generation of large-scale orchestral works created in close collaboration with leading international soloists.
The Carl Prize said that "Thomas Agerfeldt Olesen’s Violin Concerto is a moving and virtuosic work that creates a vivid connection to the great violin concertos of the past. At the same time, Olesen renews the genre with a distinctly personal voice, giving the concerto its own unique character.
The result is a work that both honours tradition and looks ahead. Violin Concerto is a piece in which history and modernity merge into an intense and innovative whole."
