Five years ago, the schoolboy Johan Dalene cruised to victory at the Carl Nielsen International Competition. Seldom has that verb presented itself more readily. I was covering the event for Medici TV, and clearly recall the combination of coolness and steel with which the Swedish–Norwegian violinist moved up through the rounds. He was not the most virtuosic player in Odense, but he was absolutely the most focused and the most interesting – able to still a restless crowd hungry for lunch, not by dazzling them with pyrotechnics but by whispering in their ear.

The Dalene sitting opposite me now – taller, broader, with the confidence once only evident in his characteristic way of eyeballing an audience – is the adult version of the kid I encountered in 2019. Does he remember much about the competition? ‘Well, yes, my memory was fully formed!’ he laughs. ‘I remember getting more into it after the first round, and there being a lot of pieces to play. I was practising quite late into the night. It was very hard to enjoy it, but I was trying to.’

Few of us knew, back then, that Dalene’s first recording was already in the can: an account of the Barber and Tchaikovsky concertos with the symphony orchestra of his home town, Norrköping, which gleaned an Editor’s Choice in these pages (2/20), as did its two immediate successors. The recording didn’t so much reveal hidden strengths in Dalene’s artistry as reinforce those we already knew about – the clarity of his playing, the savoury quality of his tone, his vast range of expression wrought from apparently simple means and his ability to steer a phrase to its end point with a sense of inevitability.

Victory in Odense was ‘the start of something’, says Dalene, but the arrival of Covid-19 almost a year later very nearly put an end to it again. Perhaps that wasn’t such a bad thing. The pandemic ensured that not even the BBC New Generation Artists programme – much reduced in intensity and extended by a year – could rob Dalene of that very Scandinavian commodity: time. In Stockholm, he continued playing for his teacher Per Enoksson – as he does today – and hung out with Janine Jansen, ‘such a big inspiration for me’ (it was Jansens’s husband, Daniel Blendulf, who conducted the concerto recording).

Dalene with his accompanist Peter Friis Johansson in a recording session for the new BIS album ‘Souvenirs’ at the Sendesaal in Bremen, north-west Germany (photography: Jens Braun)

Dalene and Jansen share a certain poise on the instrument, but that’s probably where comparisons end. ‘It was never about sounding like Janine,’ says Dalene. ‘When I play chamber music with her, she hears things; she can hear if I have a clear intention in a phrase, and more importantly, if I don’t. Then you listen to her playing, and hear how full of imagination it is. You hear her on a recording and you just know it’s her. That’s the goal.’ Has he listened to her new recording of the Sibelius Concerto (7/24)? ‘Of course. Amazing. Just fantastic.’

After a bijou collection of works for violin and piano titled ‘Nordic Rhapsody’ (5/21) came Dalene’s own recording of the Sibelius. It fell to me to review it (4/22), though it was Nielsen’s Violin Concerto, also on the disc, that made the bigger impression. The Nielsen is a near perfect fit for Dalene’s interpretative plain dealing, his youth, the lack of sweetness he draws from his 1725 ‘Duke of Cambridge’ Stradivari and his very Nordic scepticism in the face of manners, etiquette and notated music’s aristocratic baggage. ‘The piece does have elegance,’ he counters – correctly. ‘But it’s an elegant simplicity. You don’t want to overthink it musically, and I think the same of the Sibelius Concerto. The Sibelius looks quite Romantic, and I enjoy it when people play it romantically, especially those sixths in the first movement – but it can be even more beautiful when it’s not over-Romantic. I think it can take more introversion.’

For a playing musician, Dalene listens to plenty of recordings. Contrary to notions of a generation that can’t accept a standpoint different from theirs, he appears particularly to enjoy interpretations that contrast markedly with his own – including those from bygone players for whom sweetness, virtuosity and vibrato were everything. ‘I looked up to the older guys, Oistrakh and Heifetz,’ he says. ‘I would listen to hours and hours of them and Vengerov in my parents’ car.’ After a period in his early teens when he fell out of love with the violin, he reconnected with many of those once-familiar recordings via YouTube. He picked up his instrument again, with renewed interest.

Dalene’s latest recording for BIS is a homage to those figures – a ‘smorgasbord’ of virtuoso pieces with a couple of judiciously chosen temperature-coolers woven in. Accompanied by the Swedish pianist Peter Friis Johansson (joining him for the first time on record), Dalene opens with Ravel’s Tzigane and finger-twists his way to Waxman’s Carmen Fantasie via works including Kreisler’s Recitativo und Scherzo-caprice, the ‘Méditation’ from Massenet’s Thaïs and Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir d’un lieu cher. Dalene’s homeland is referenced via a short piece by the Swedish Romantic composer Amanda Maier-Röntgen.

Does a cool Nordic wind blow through even the heat of Carmen’s Seville, in Dalene’s hands? To some extent, it does. ‘I had to rethink these pieces,’ he says, in relation to his youthful obsession with listening to them played by icons of the instrument. ‘They’re not just virtuoso vehicles. Often the passages with the most character are slow and soft – you can take a lot of time over them. When I listened back to our recording of the Carmen Fantasie, I couldn’t believe how slow that middle section on the G string was. But I’m happy with it. It’s nice to listen out for those kinds of things, to try to find something personal in them.’

The Waxman was on the menu during the early rounds of the Nielsen competition. He gave a prowling, muscular performance of it while setting out his stall as a fine musical storyteller. I wrote in my notes, back then, how straightforward and unsullied that process appeared to be for him. Perhaps what I was witnessing was the sort of complete truth and authenticity that comes only with youth. As the actor Ana Torrent put it recently: ‘As kids, we have it naturally. As adults, we have to study to find it again.’

Does Dalene recognise that sentiment? ‘Absolutely. The naivety of youth is a huge advantage. There comes a point when you really start to think about what you’re doing, which of course you have to do to get to a certain level. But that also means things start to get more difficult. What you need to do is to think about things but then let them go when you’re performing – get into that flowing state. But you can’t expect that every time.’ How often can you expect it? ‘Hopefully, at least once a concert; sometimes for the whole concert, which often doesn’t mean the whole concert will be flawless.’

We discuss the sessions at the Sendesaal in Bremen, a dream location for recording chamber music. Its centrepiece, the former concert hall of Radio Bremen, is a mid-20th-century gem as remarkable for its acoustics as it is for its delectable wood-panelled interior. Dalene stays out of issues of sound, he tells me, but we agree that the proximity of the microphones to his instrument suits his earthy playing style and his penchant for low-volume intimacy.

As we talk, I sense the new album has scratched an itch for Dalene, allowing him, perhaps, to let go of some childhood dream, to prove to himself that he can reconcile the 20th-century virtuoso tradition with the cool, modern reality of his own fully developed and wholly different playing style. ‘This music is so much fun and I love to play it,’ he says, ‘but I would say I’m more interested in other music’ (Brahms and Bach loom large in our conversation). Given his generation’s ambivalent relationship to the art of studio recording, I ask him who he made the record for. ‘I think I am doing it a little bit for myself, to be honest, which may sound selfish. I imagine myself being 80 and still playing – but maybe not, but being able to listen back and think, “Right, so that is how I was playing at that age.”’

That leads to the question of his place on the broader musical map. His friend and BBC New Generation Artist predecessor the Norwegian viola player Eivind Ringstad has recently taken a job in the LSO. Guro Kleven Hagen, the Norwegian violinist whose own debut concerto recording was named an Editor’s Choice in Gramophone (8/14), is now concertmaster of the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet orchestra. Do these apparent retreats by his peers into salaried, pandemic-proof security make Dalene think? ‘Right now, I would be super-happy playing in an orchestra, as long as I’m still working with music. But I’m also super-happy getting to play concertos with orchestras, which is what I really want to do.’

The new season offers him plenty of opportunities there. He’s visiting orchestras in Berlin, Minnesota and Liverpool and joins the RPO for a multidate, four-concerto residency. The longevity and familiarity of that arrangement would appear to suit Dalene, who is as cautious in the face of overload as he is careful in conversation. ‘I try to say yes to as much as I can, but I need to feel as though I have really prepared a piece and have something to say. Even if I could play a concerto now – just pick it up – I would want to go deep into it beforehand, to try to rediscover it and see if I have any new ideas. That’s also what makes it fun to play.’

I ask him how many concertos he could ‘pick up’, but no number is forthcoming – a mark of prudence, I suspect, more than evidence of a bluff. There will be more concerto recordings coming from BIS, and we might presume they will include the work written for him by the Swedish composer Tebogo Monnakgotla. He is playing Globe Skimmer Surfing the Somali Jet ‘something like 15 times’ in the coming season, having given the world premiere in Stockholm in 2023. ‘It’s a great piece, and it was a cool process – Tebogo would come over to my place and we would try things out. She paints a really unique sound world.’ Does it feel good that a concerto exists which only he can play, for the time being at least? ‘It’s a cool feeling but it’s also a big responsibility. It feels good that the piece is sticking to me: that I’ve played it a load of times and I’m going to play it even more.’

Dalene’s accent betrays his dual heritage. Speaking English, a hint of clipped Norwegian encroaches on his rotund Swedish accent. He is dressed in jeans and a sweater, and is fresh-faced underneath his mop of chocolate brown hair. We are sitting outside a utilitarian cafe in central Stockholm (his suggested meeting place), almost underneath one of the many concrete flyovers that carve their way tragically through what should be the most beautiful city in northern Europe. In the middle of a wet, blustery July, this is proving one of the few hot, blazingly sunny days.

Life, frankly, feels good. ‘This is a very nice place to live,’ says Dalene, who moved to the capital when he was 16 to attend high school there. Seven years later, can he enjoy all that Stockholm has to offer? ‘I tend to see friends in the evenings, but I like to feel like I’ve finished the day’s work before I do something fun,’ he says, revealing a Lutheran work ethic. ‘Most of my friends are musicians, so they’re also practising a lot. There’s a mutual understanding there.’

I am reminded of an encounter with another young Nordic violinist some years ago, who was exactly the age Dalene is now, and her railing against the easy Scandinavian life and its effect on the artist. ‘The mentality is that you should play because it is fun and not feel pressure,’ she told me, ‘but sometimes you need those pressures, because without those ugly feelings you will have nothing to give of yourself. You need to know what it is to be jealous, to be desperate.’

I paraphrase the quote for Dalene, and am interested in his response to it, sitting in the comfort of the Stockholm sun in the month when most Swedes check out of work and the city for weeks on end. ‘I feel lucky,’ he says. ‘Scandinavia gives you a feeling of security and the highest living standards in the world. I know that if I lose a finger I can still educate myself later in life. Her view is a beautiful one in a way, and I’m sure it works for her, but I think you can be an emotional person even if you have not experienced serious struggles in your life. Experiencing beautiful moments with your friends can be inspiring. I think I am probably quite a simple person.’

No regrets, then? ‘I would not change my current situation – the possibilities I have to travel and to play as much as I do. One thing I have missed is the experience of going to music college, which I didn’t do. I made a conscious decision not to go and to study privately instead, as I wanted to try out how it would be playing professionally. But then the pandemic hit, and I asked myself why I had made that decision – because I really enjoyed high school. Now, I think it’s too late, because even on a bachelor’s degree course the demands on your time are quite high. I missed seeing people every day. Whether I wanted to or not, just seeing people.’

The night before we meet, Dalene has played a recital in Linköping. The day after, he plays the same programme, with one piece added, in Björnlunda. Away from the limelight, they are effectively warm-ups for his third Wigmore Hall concert, just over a week away – and a run-in for Beethoven’s C minor Violin Sonata in particular, which he hasn’t played since he was 19. ‘I find the mood of the sonata quite scary,’ he says, ‘and in a couple of spots it’s quite uncomfortable both for the pianist and for the the violinist.’ Will there be more practise today, or can he enjoy the weather? ‘I don’t get out in the sun enough, what’s why I am so pale!’

Talk turns to Stockholm’s music life, where change is afoot. As Daniel Harding prepares to step down as Chief Conductor of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra after 18 seasons, there’s also a transformation under way at the Royal Stockholm PO with the imminent retirement of longstanding general director Stefan Forsberg and the recent arrival of Ryan Bancroft as Chief Conductor – ‘the most lovely guy and such a great conductor’, says Dalene of the Californian. ‘It’s a changing of the guard,’ he adds. ‘Yes, you millennials are taking over,’ I suggest. ‘Oh, no!’ he exclaims. Actually, I wouldn’t worry.

This article originally appeared in the October 2024 issue of Gramophone magazine. Never miss an issue – subscribe to Gramophone today