Act (2004)

'...featuring writing of real virtuosity in which musical ideas are flung around the orchestra, constantly evolving and transforming.
Here the brilliance of the score was matched by a scintillating ­performance from the orchestra and, in particular, its percussion section.'

Act was a contemporary classical hit. The audience loved it, and the orchestra played it outstandingly....The highlight of the concert...filled with energy, a complex and genuinely organic sense of development that's engaging both viscerally and emotionally.

The concluding work of the evening, Rolf Wallin's Act, was also like a Stravinsky commentary. But where Rebne's concerto was a pale shadow of Stravinsky's tonal language, Wallin's work appeared as a more than worthy commentary on the great Russian.Wallin showed full command over the art of orchestration and timbre, and the musical playfulness with which he treated the musical form is quite unique in a Norwegian context. I'd love to have taken my hat off to him, if it hadn't been blown off my head in one of the rawest performances I've heard the Oslo Philharmonic deliver. In no way was the work a compromise to please the audience, but its unyielding honesty, together with the extraordinary interpretation, showed contemporary music at its best. Hats off, gentlemen, Rolf Wallin's Act will be standing as a standard work in Norwegian orchestral repertoire.