Johan S. Halvorsen

Festive March

Festival March was written for a matinè at The National Stage, Bergen on Norway's National Day 17th of May 1898, on which Johan Halvorsen was leading the orchestra. For this first performance, the piece was performed anonymously without any credit to the composer.
After that, he brought the piece to the National Theatre in Oslo where it was used as incidental music to the works 'Kongsemnerne' (1900) and 'Tordenskiold' (1901). For the latter one he credited himself as the composer. After that, he also used the music for 'Christian Fredrik' in 1905.
The original manuscript was found by Jan Eriksen in 1969. He brought it to the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation and the Norwegian Radio Orchestra where it was performed several times under the baton of (O/ivind Bergh.
It is very likely that this march is one of the pieces that was saved from the fire in 1943 thirteen years after Halvorsens retirement as orchestra leader in 1930.