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ARTISTS 2025
Due to change of ticket system the ticket sale will be postponed from medio January to medio February.

Anna Fedorova | piano

From Ukraine, in 2025 we will be visited for the first time by the pianist Anna Fedorova. She was the first musician to organize a charity concert for the victims of the war already on 6 March 2022. She plays around the world with symphony orchestras, in recitals and at festivals, and with her 45 solo performances at the Concertgebow in Amsterdam, she is jokingly characterized as their house pianist. She has distinguished herself on Rachmaninov and Scriabin, and her concert recording of Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto now has over 37 million views on YouTube. But in Lofoten we get to hear her in Chopin's very finest works, the four Ballades.

Arvid Engegard | violin (artistic director)

Arvid Engegård is an institution in Norwegian music life. His quartet - the Engegårdquartette, our house band - celebrates 20 years next year. The quartet tours extensively throughout Norway and abroad. The discography counts 20 releases. He regularly conducts all the country's orchestras. With his trio of accordion and bass, he plays everything from classical pearls to old dance and tours the country. He is also the artistic director of the Engegård Quartet's own festival 1,2,3, where they focus on one composer over the course of a weekend. He also watches as many games as he can with the football team from his hometown, Bodø-Glimt.

Joachim Carr | piano

With his roots from Værøy, Joachim Carr from Bergen is 1/8 part Lofoten! He also enjoys this spectacular region and participated in the festival for the first time already in 2014. Then as winner of the Grieg competition in 2012. He then also chose Stamsund church for his solo album with music by, among others, Liszt, Bach/ Busono and the Messiah. With us, he plays nothing less than Beethoven's last sonata, op. 111. Furthermore, there will be a French suite by Bach. He will also collaborate with the festival's two Norwegian folk musicians. And not least, there will be spectacular events in John Adams Halleluja Junction with Marc-André Hamelin!

Dénes Varjon | piano

Dénes Varjon is next to Sir Andras Schiff Hungary's most famous pianist. He visited the festival in Lofoten for the first time in 2015, and in 2022 was artistic director of our piano edition. He was back already in 2023, and in 2025 will perform Elgar's piano quintet with the Engegård Quartet, Chopin's Fantasy in F minor, op. 49 and Beethoven's sonata in E major, opus 109. As always, there will also be music by Bartok.

Marc-André Hamelin | piano

Canadian Marc-André Hamelin belongs to the world's top pianists. Few master such a wide repertoire. He is equally at home in Haydn, Mozart and Schubert as in more unknown repertoire by Busoni, Alkan and Medtner. But in his discography of an impressive 90 recordings, we also find jazz-inspired music and ragtime. And not least his own music. In Lofoten, we get to hear him in Beethoven's famous and infamous Hammer Clavier Sonata, in Rachmaninov's insanely virtuosic second sonata, but not least in his own new piano quintet. An ever-so-small highlight will be Adam's Halleluja Junctions for two pianos with our own pianistJoachim Carr.

Berit Opheim | singer

Berit Opheim is one of Norway's foremost singers with folk music as her most important area. In 2023, she was awarded the Statens Kunstnerstipend for 10 years, and in the same year nominated for the Nordic Council's Music Prize. In 2023 she was also awarded the Hilmar Prize, and in 2024 she received the Folk Music Prize from the Norwegian Center for Folk Music and Folk Dance. Opheim has a very varied palette of musical expressions, and has performed both medieval music, early baroque and contemporary music. She has premiered many works in various genres. She has taught at the Grieg Academy, the Norwegian Academy of Music, the Rauland Academy and several other places, and collaborated with many of Norway's leading performers, ensembles and orchestras. Opheim has participated in more than 50 recordings, several of them solo. In Lofoten, she focuses on folk music.

Per Anders Buen Garnås | harding fiddle

Per Anders Buen Garnås started playing the harding fiddle already at the age of 6, inspired by his uncles Hauk and Knut. He has apprenticed with players in various traditions, but especially from Telemark. Today he is among Norway's most respected folk musicians, and he has won the Landskappleiken a total of 6 times, most recently in 2024. He participates in several recordings, and for his solo albums he has won the Folke-Larmprisen twice. In Lofoten, he will play traditional Harding fiddle tunes, and not least the originals of several of Grieg's arrangements of these in his op. 72. This in a concert where Joachim Carr plays the same arrangements.

Marmen Quartet | String quartet

Johannes Marmen, violin

Laia Valentin Braun, violin

Bryony Gibson-Cornish, viola

Sinéad O'Halloran, cello

The Marmen Quartet is named after its Swedish primarius, Johannes Marmen. They really broke through in 2019, when they won the competitions in both Bordeaux and Banff, Canada. They have been met with the greatest enthusiasm by critics, and have garnered praise as "the best performance of Haydn I have experienced". In Lofoten you can hear them in Haydn in particular. It becomes more Viennese classical in Mozart's Dissonance Quartet. But they also last with Ravel's only quartet, a gem in the repertoire.

Trio Con Brio Copenhagen | piano trio

Jens Elvekjær, piano

Soo-Jin Hong, violin

Soo-Kyong Hong, cello

Trio Con Brio has visited Lofoten several times, and has always impressed both the audience and the organizer so that they have been immediately invited back. They are undoubtedly among the world's most sought-after piano trios. In the summer of 2025, you can hear them in trios by Franz Schubert and Rebecca Clarke, and in collaboration with other festival musicians music by Josef Suk and Peter Tschaikovsky.

The Engegård Quartet

Arvid Engegård, violin

Laura Custodio Sabas, violin

Juliet Jopling, viola

Jan Clemens Carlsen, cello

The Engegård Quartet, where our artistic director Arvid is the primarius, has been our house band since the quartet was established in 2005. With their physical performance and great commitment, they have thrilled audiences all over Europe. Together with Vertavo and the Oslo String Quartet, the quartet has meant a lot to chamber music in Norway through the establishment of the Oslo Quartet Series. They have a varied discography, and are in the process of completing recordings of all Mozart quartets. In their own festival 1, 2, 3 in Oslo, they focus on one composer over a weekend. In Lofoten, they play Brahms' A minor quartet and the brand new Ice by English John Anderson. But as always, they participate in many different festival ensembles, and the cellist - Jan Clemens Carlsen - plays Grieg's cello sonata this year together with Joachim Carr.

The Gerhard Quartet

Lluís Castán, violin

Judit Bardolet, violin

Miquel Jordà, viola

Jesús Miralles, cello

The Gerhard Quartet comes from Barcelona and has taken its name from the Catalan composer Robert Gerhard, a prominent figure in Spanish musical life before Franco. The members of the quartet have known each other since they were children and shared an interest in music. Early on they decided that quartet was the best thing they could do together. Today they are firmly established in the classical world, and since their start in 2014 have released five critically acclaimed releases. They come to Lofoten through the MERITA project, and perform a number of times both in our main program and a side program of public and private concerts.

The Goldberg Quartet

Jingzhi Zhang, violin

Giacomo Lucato, violin

Matilde Simionato, viola

Martino Simionato, cello

The Goldberg Quartet participates with us through the large European collaborative project MERITA (see details under "About the festival"). This young Italian quartet - established in 2021 - has already made a strong mark in Europe, and this year was chosen as the best young ensemble by Italian music critics. The previous year they won the competition in Nicosia. In the 24/25 season, they tour several countries in Europe, and are also going to several countries in Asia. They are soon out with their first disc releases with Mozart, Brahms and Ravel. In Lofoten, they mainly give concerts before the festival, but have their own concert on the opening day and play at the opening concert.

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