Henninge Landaas

Viola player Henninge Båtnes Landaas started playing the violin when she was just three years old, at the Communal Music School in Trondheim. She had a fateful musical experience when she was around eight:

− Around that time I was allowed to join in on an orchestra project with both professional musicians and students at the Trøndelag Music Conservatory. We played Brahms’ First symphony, and I had my life’s greatest experience. I especially remember the timpanis in the first movement. It was an overwhelming experience of long lines and powerful music. It was almost certainly this first meeting with symphonic music which made me interested.

− You can´t feel more free

She grew up in an exceptionally music-orientated home:

− The whole family would attend absolutely all concerts with the Trondheim Symphony Orchestra, and when we weren’t there, we would play a record with Sibelius’ Violin Concerto with David Oistrakh at full blast in the living room. There was a lot of joy and playing together growing up, especially chamber music. Every summer for ten years I would take part in a chamber music course at Sund Folkehøgskole, first with Den Danske Kvartett, then with the Chillingirian Quartet.

It was at these courses that Henninge came into contact with the Vertavo String Quartet, which she was later to become a part of for seventeen years. She has also been a member of the Trondheim Soloists from their beginning in 1987, of The Norwegian Chamber Orchestra since 1994, and was a member of the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra from 1996-2000, and from 2009. The aspect of the musical profession Henninge likes best, is the feeling of the music being created anew in the present moment:

− Working as much as possible on something, to then be able to let oneself go completely when one meets the public in the concert situation, is happiness. You can´t feel more free. It´s a fantastic feeling to sense the concentration from an entire orchestra all at once. I hope the public can feel this same concentration, the same fragility, and the beauty in that this is art of the moment. That we are together on the journey that a concert is.

− Small and big highlights crop up

Johannes Brahms is the composer closest to Henninge’s heart. When it comes to highlights with the Oslo Philharmonic she mentions playing Rachmaninov’s Second symphony and Stravinsky´s The Rite of Spring with Mariss Jansons in 1992 - when she was a new substitute in the second violin group.

− Still, small and big highlights crop up in daily life, when I least expect it, perhaps in a hopelessly dry acoustic, or on a day when I’m tired and fed up. This is why this is a fantastic profession.

At Henninge’s house pauses in the music are rare:

− There is music around the clock, everyone is playing and practicing. If we want to relax, we’ll watch a film.