The audience thanked with a standing ovation when TrondheimSolistene  for the 14th time had their New Year concert in  Surnadal Culture Center, this time with Alexander Rybak, who alone was a firework.

Source: Tidens Krav pluss, published 6.1.2017. Text: Tor Helge Solli. Translation: TessaLa

It is impossible to avoid; Friday’s New Year concert with the TrondheimSoloistene, Alexander Rybak and local culture school children, who got a musical experience for life together with the great charmer Rybak, was like a fairy tale!

TrondheimSolistene is well known for the people at Nordmøre. It’s no secret that Surnadal came on tour list of the famous and award-winning soloists because the orchestra is led by Steinar Larsen who is from Surnadal and his brother Anders Larsen, who  is one of those fantastic musicians.

And we have earned the visits by filling up the concert hall “Storstuå”, and appreciated the world players coming to entertain us.

Charmed

Alexander Rybak is perhaps best known as the, until then, most supreme winner of Eurovision all time when he won with “Fairytale” in 2009. Friday, he showed that he can more than to charm Eurovision juries around Europe.

The performers entered the stage to a fully packed cultural hall, and the concert opened as always with performance by locals, where young students from the schools in the region led the bow over the violin strings along with the idols of the orchestra, who played with the young talents only as seriously as such professional  performers can do. Rybak also joined in on one piece, and it was evident that both the star, the soloists and students enjoyed themselves on stage.

After the applause to judge, there were more than those who knew the students very well, who liked what they saw and heard.

 

A big honour

Then the pros took over. It was as always fiery, beautiful and a lot of fun. Øyvind Gimse will soon withdraw as the artistic director in TrondheimSoloistene after fifteen years. Geir Inge Lotsberg takes over. He was Alexander Rybak’s old violin teacher, and this evening the audience experienced the teacher and student playing together on stage in the cultural center.

– It is a great honour for me to participate in this tour. I feel honored to play with so many young talents. In 20 years, it is perhaps you sitting in the orchestra. And considering that I am here as a violinist, it’s no wonder I’m nervous with these amazing performers, explained an honest star initially.

More than that we neither saw nor heard of the so-called nerves. Rybak contributed to that the fourteenth New Year concert became one of the very, very best, simply likeable in all respects. He struck jokes, flirted with the audience and got a  great response from an audience that we can almost describe as ecstatic.

And of course we got “Fairytale” at the end, as an announced encore so that “we do not have to be applauded in again twenty times” as Rybak so elegantly put it.

We will be forgiven

The audience gave a standing ovation in the end, after we during the concert certainly did some “mistakes” when we clapped eagerly between the parts in the classical pieces. We supposedly shouldn’t do that, I overheard from someone who is skilled in this.

But we are definitely forgiven, and we applaud from sincere joy and to show that we really value and appreciate that we get to experience such adventurous evenings of concerts in this way year after year.

And next year it is 15th anniversary, so just put Surnadal on the touring list again, Steinar Larsen.