ELJA

Elja - live at Festival Musica Strasbourg 2025. Concert recording by Radio France.

Photo: Stephanie Berger / Carnegie Hall.

Kronos Quartet, Benedicte Maurseth, Carnegie Hall, New York.

Composition

Benedicte Maurseth

Kristine Tjøgersen

Performers

Kronos Quartet

Benedicte Maurseth

Visual design

Evelina Dembacke

Commissioned by

Kronos Quartet

Carnegie Hall

Riksscenen

Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival

In collaboration with

Riksscenen

Festival Musica

Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival

Supported by

Arts Council Norway

Music Norway

The Norwegian Composers’ Fund

The Bergesen Foundation

Det norske komponistfond

Komponistenes vederlagsfond

Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation

Short video from Strasbourg-performance by Kronos Quartet and Benedicte Maurseth.

Kronos Quartet /Benedicte Maurseth /

Kristine Tjøgersen / //

ELJA 2025

Elja is a new work by Benedicte Maurseth and Kristine Tjøgersen for Kronos Quartet and Maurseth. Premiered at Carnegie Hall, New York March 28, 2025. Elja was commissioned by the renowned Kronos Quartet, and has been performed at Banff Centre in Canada, Kronos Festival in San Francisco, Ultima Contemporary Music Festival, Oslo and Festival Musica Strasbourg in France.

The piece was co-composed by Benedicte Maurseth and Kristine Tjøgersen, specifically for the quartet performing on Hardanger fiddles, Hardanger viola, and Hardanger cello pecially crafted by instrument maker Ottar Kåsa. The quartet is joined by composer Benedicte Maurseth as soloist on Hardanger fiddle.

Benedicte Maurseth and Kristine Tjøgersen are part of a new generation of Norwegian composers deeply engaged with questions of ecology, and the ways in which we perceive our surroundings. Together they have created Elja, a musical response to the vast nature of Hardangervidda.

The music embraces the resonant strings, alternative tunings and enveloping acoustic spaces of these traditional instruments, while opening tradition to new sonic worlds. At the Norway premiere at Ultima and in Strasbourg, Evelina Dembacke contributes with a visual design inspired by the unique flora of the mountain plateau, the shifting weather, and the changing daylight.

Press Reactions

Interview with David Harrington and Benedicte Maurseth about Elja during Ultima Contemporary Music Festival in Oslo, broadcasted on the contemporary radio program «Spillerom» at NRK (Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation) 21.09.2025.

Detailed review of Elja in Norwegian by Eystein Sandvik of Elja starting at 45:37 minutes.

I experience it as a very liberated work, which is both beautiful, poignantly strange and playful at the same time. Tight at the same time improvisational. It is a striking fusion between Benedicte Maurseth's deeply rooted in tradition, at the same time innovative and very poignant Hardanger fiddle playing, the Kronos Quartet who have appropriated some of this, at the same time standing securely anchored in their aesthetics, filtered through Kristine Tjøgersen's fascination for nature and sound and how all this is connected. It was an organic fusion of all these elements, and simply three quarters of an hour of fascinating journey through a striking new musical landscape.

Eystein Sandvik, NRK Spillerom

ULTIMA CONTEMORARY MUSIC FESTIVAL / RIKSSCENEN, OSLO. PHOTOS: NABEEH SAMAAN / ULTIMA