Ragnhild Hemsing

Violinist Ragnhild Hemsing unites rigorous classical training with the folk heritage of her native Norway. She interprets both traditional material and formal concert works while playing the Hardanger fiddle—an instrument equipped with sympathetic strings—as readily as the standard violin.

Born on February 15, 1988, in Valdres, a mountainous district long associated with robust folk customs, she is the older sister of violinist Eldbjørg Hemsing. She began violin studies at age five, later enrolling at the Barratt Due Institute of Music in Oslo. At fourteen she made her concert debut in Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64, with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra and soon repeated the work with the Trondheim Symphony Orchestra.

Between 2003 and 2006 she captured several major prizes, two of them awarded on a European level. As a teenager she appeared regularly with Norway’s leading orchestras, her profile further elevated through her association with conductor Neeme Järvi, whose activities in Bergen proved instrumental. This connection led to engagements with Järvi and the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra; in 2011 she also participated in his recording of Johan Halvorsen’s Fossegrimen Suite, released on an album devoted to the composer’s orchestral music. She continued her training with Boris Kuschnir in Vienna.

That same year she issued her first solo album, YR, which juxtaposed Norwegian traditional pieces with a sonata by Edvard Grieg. The title derives from a work by Lasse Thoresen that she has since championed, including in a choreographic presentation devised by Hallgrim Hansegård. Also in 2011 she joined her sister Eldbjørg and the ensemble Kvarts for the folk album Varde; together the siblings supplied music for a one-hour television documentary on the nineteenth-century violin virtuoso Ole Bull.

She subsequently signed with Norway’s 2L label, known for its emphasis on recordings that merge classical and folk idioms. Her first 2L release, Northern Timbre (2017), presented works by Grieg, Sibelius, and Nielsen. She next recorded Beethoven’s Testaments of 1802 for the same label, then moved to Berlin Classics and issued Røta in 2021, featuring both violin and Hardanger fiddle. The following year she returned on that imprint with an adaptation of Grieg’s Peer Gynt, Op. 23, that employed both instruments and highlighted the folk elements already present in the original score.