News

Audio Advent Calendar

November 1. 2011

From 1 December we will have our annual advent calendar, featuring a new recording clip each day until Christmas Day. These are digitalised extracts from pre-1960 recordings - many of them treasures from early 78s (such as Caruso singing "Sancta Maria"). Enjoy!

Peer Gynt-exhibition back online

April 29. 2011

The Norwegian Institute of Recorded Sound has made an exhibition of all LP covers from recordings of the Peer Gynt music of Edvard Grieg which is housed at the institute. The exhibition has travelled the world, and is now finally available on our website again.

Audio exhibition: Listen to Handel's Messiah for Easter

April 15. 2011

We follow up the great success we had with our Christmas calendar with a musical treat for Easter. Throughout Easter we will publish arias, choruses and orchestral pieces from Handel's Messiah on our web site. All the music clips presented are from the same recording, which was made in London in 1906 and released on 78 records in various editions since then.

New mystery: Music from a mime

March 1. 2011

We continue our series where we ask our readers to help identify the music on unlabeled discs. This time the man who is known for the "art of silence" gives us trouble when he breaks the silence.

If you look up in a dictionary under the word "mime", you would most likely find a picture of Marcel Marceau. But as a recording artist, he is not the first name that comes to mind, so what could be on a record labeled Marcel Marceau?

New series: Mysteries from the archives

Feb 2. 2010

We are working continuously to catalog our ever-increasing collections, but some records present us with bigger challenges than others. Sometimes we are able to identify such mysteries ourselves, but some records are such great challenges that we come to a standstill. Therefore, we now ask our knowledgeable readers for help. In the series Mysteries from the archive we will post some of these records that we are unable to decode, in the hope that some of our readers can show off their skills and knowledge where we are at the end of ours. The first mystery is a record filled with love, but not all of the songs are as easy to recognize: Help us solve this mystery!

Listening course: Beethoven's Emperor Concerto

Jan 6. 2010

The Listening courses have started again for the semester and first piece up is Beethoven's fifth piano concerto, better known as the Emperor Concerto.This piece replaces Strauss' Ein Heldenleben, which originally was on the agenda. In connection with this course we have put together an exhibition with several of the recordings of this concerto found in our collections. In addition we present a taste of the concerto on our website through a short excerpt from one of the recordings in the exhibition.

Advent Calendar 2010

Nov 22. 2010

Time flies, and the Christmas season is upon us again. The streets and trees are dressed in Christmas garb with lights and ribbons, the smell of gingerbread and mulled wine is teasing the nostrils, and the Christmas candy that have been in stores since October can now be enjoyed with a good conscience. True to tradition, Norwegian Institute of Recorded Sound serves a 24 course musical meal as an early Christmas present to everyone. Enjoy!

Listen to India of the 1920s

Nov 22. 2010

Nearly 250 sound recordings from India at the beginning of last century are now digitized and made available online through the Digital South Asia Library. The recordings were made to document the different languages and dialects in India, and 97 different languages and dialects are included in the recordings. The contents range from retellings of local stories and Biblical parables to the performances of Indian folk songs.

Library of Congress: Sound recordings in dire straits

11. Nov. 2010

The historical sound recordings of America are in dire straits, according to a report from the Library of Congress National Recording Preservation Board.

New website

29. Oct 2010

The website of the Norwegian Institute of Recorded Sound has gone through an upgrade to provide better access to the different material we have published. We are working hard to make the content from the old pages available, but if there is anything you miss, do not hesitate to contact us.

Christmas exhibiton 2009 with Mp3 advent calendar

1 Dec. 2009

The Norwegian Institute of Recorded Sound replies to the great response on last year's musical advent calender with more old recordings. Each day before Christmas, we present a recording from the "good old times", where legendary singers and performers from the first half of the 20th. century gives their account of Christmas music.

Norwegian Sound Archive Conference 2009 - October 27-29. in Trondheim

12 Sept. 2009

he Norwegian Institute of Recorded Sound heads the organization of The Norwegian Sound Archive Conference 2009, October 27-29th, in Trondheim. The conference is held jointly with the Folk Music Archive's yearly seminar, and is hosted by Rockheim (litterally the Home of Rock), which is opening its doors this Autumn.

Klaus Egge (1906-1979)

22. August 2009

This year it is the 30 year anniversary of the death of the composer Klaus Egge, one of the most prominent Norwegian composers of his time. Unfortunately, in recent years, many of his works have failed to receive the attention they deserve, with one exception being the Piano Concerto No. 2. Klaus Egge's music has qualities that make it very much deserving of a place in the concert repertoire.