KVANDAL, JOHAN (1919–1999)

Joachim Knoph has performed as a pianist in a number of European countries, as well as several times in, among others, China and Russia. He has collaborated with many of Norway’s most distinguished instrumentalists and singers, and has won prizes and grants such as the Yamaha award. He has participated in several commercial recordings, and already, as a student, he was a soloist with the Norwegian Radio Orchestra on a CD conducted by Ari Rasilainenen of two piano concertos by F.J. Berg. Joachim Knoph received his first piano lessons from Helene Jensen, Wolfgang Plagge and Jens Harald Bratlie, followed by studies at the Norwegian Academy of Music under Einar Steen-Nøkleberg. Thereafter followed further diploma studies with Jiří Hlinka at the Malmö Academy of Music/Barratt Due Institute of Music. He has also been a student of Nelson Delle-Vigne Fabbri at the Ecole Normale de Musique Alfred Cortot in Paris. Joachim Knoph is also active as a composer, including music for films.

Johan Kvandal was born in 1919. His parents were the artist Lissa (Amunda) and the composer David Monrad Johansen, and this early exposure to the arts proved extremely influential. He studied composition with Geirr Tveitt from 1937–1942 and with Joseph Marx in Vienna from 1942–1944. After the war, he completed his studies at the Norwegian Academy of Music, majoring first in conducting in 1947 and then in organ in 1951. In the early years Kvandal was, like many other composers of his generation, influenced by the predominantly nationalist trends of the 1920s and 1930s. He sought in this period to combine elements from Norwegian folk music with classical forms.