Johan Derksen

Only 20 years old, Johan Dalene has already been hailed as ‘a musician of special sensibilities’ (Gramophone) in possession of ‘a rare fire’ (Diapason), and his début disc, with the concertos of Tchaikovsky and Barber, was described as ‘one of the finest violin débuts of the last decade’ in the BBC Music Magazine.

Born in 2000, Swedish violinist Johan Dalene is already making an impact on the international scene. His refreshingly honest musicality, combined with an ability to engage with musicians and audiences alike, has won him many admirers. Johan began playing the violin at the age of four and made his professional concerto debut three years later. A student at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, he has also worked closely with mentors including Janine Jansen, Leif Ove Andsnes and Gidon Kremer. Johan has been a prize winner at a number of competitions, most recently the prestigious Carl Nielsen Competition at which he won First Prize.

Award-winning conductor and composer Johan de Meij's First Symphony 'The Lord of the Rings' is a spectacular evocation in five portraits and scenes based on Tolkien's tale of a grand quest and the struggle of good against evil. The Second Symphony is an ode to the symmetry of New York's streets and its massive architecture, as well as a tribute to the American styles of Copland and Bernstein, while the cinematic effects of the Third Symphony form an epic paean to the entire earth in all its miraculous beauty.

This new Chandos CD of the music of the neglected Romantic-era Norwegian composer Johan Halvorsen is an absolute delight from first note to last. Until recently, when music-lovers were asked: "How many Norwegian works can you name?" they typically replied: "Grieg's Piano Concerto and Halvorsen's 'Entry of the Boyars'."

This recital brings together two established classics from the 20th century with lesser-known works from the repertoire for violin and piano. Alongside Ravel’s Sonata, a work that reveals the influence of jazz on the French composer, and Prokofiev’s wartime Sonata, Op. 94a, an idiomatic arrangement of its original version for flute, we find compositions by Arvo Pärt, Lili Boulanger and Grażyna Bacewicz, which, at times meditative, at times lyrical, at times folk-inspired, testify to the richness of this repertoire.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Neeme Järvi was conducting second- or third-rate repertoire for Chandos, and he's doing the same in the 21st century, but this time his performances demonstrate his serious commitment to the repertoire, which was not the case with his distinctly disinterested recordings of such third-raters as Reger and Kalinnikov.

Acclaimed Swedish electronica producer Johan Agebjörn’s highly-anticipated solo ambient debut, Mossebo, evokes human warmth in a wintry landscape, expertly juxtaposing intimacy and isolation. Named after the house in which Johan lived while composing and recording the album, Mossebo is a collection of ambient pieces composed between 2004 and 2007; and one additional track that was created in 1996. Says Agebjörn, "I would describe the tracks as ambient with electro beats, giving the music a rich atmosphere as well as a distinct forward motion in a sci-fi kind of way. If I were to choose three words to describe the music, they would be melancholy, winter, and travel".