Arvid Engegård Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Robert Schumann

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) composed Symphony No. 40 during a few intense summer weeks in 1788, shortly after the loss of his daughter. The symphony opens with one of Mozart’s most famous melodies, carrying a restless and unsettled mood. Echoing the Sturm und Drang literature of the time, the work explores turbulent and often conflicting emotions.

In October 1956, Arne Nordheim (1931–2010) had his breakthrough in Norwegian musical life when his String Quartet No. 1 was premiered in Oslo. From the 1960s onward, Nordheim gained the most attention for his pioneering use of electronic elements, but in 1975 he reworked the final movement of the quartet into Nachruf for strings – nachruf being the German word for “memorial tribute.”

Robert Schumann (1810–1856) wrote his first symphony in record time during the winter of 1841. A few months later, he began work on another, conceived as a counterpart to the first—darker and more dramatic. However, it took ten years before it was published as Symphony No. 4. With its tightly interwoven movements and cyclical structure, it remains Schumann’s most innovative and influential symphony.