Johan Kvandal was one of Norway’s most highly esteemed 20th-century composers. He wrote a substantial body of works, notably orchestral, vocal and instrumental, that was popular with musicians and audiences alike. Initially encouraged by his father, the composer David Monrad Johansen, when he followed the predominantly nationalist trends of the 1920s and 1930s, Kvandal went on to study in Paris and Vienna, absorbing some of the infuences of composers such as Bartók, Stravinsky and Messiaen. From the 1970s onwards, a return to Norwegian folk-music as the very building bricks of his compositions, combined with the musical currents of the time, led to the development of an attractive and sometimes daring musical language described by Kvandal himself as “modern tonality”.

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.