Sæverud’s Sixth Symphony was written during World War II and serves as a protest against the ravages of the occupiers. Fartein Valen’s Violin Concerto is a single-movement concerto written in 1940 in memory of his relative Arne Valen, who died of tuberculosis at the age of 20.

It was Johan Svendsen’s First Symphony that led Edvard Grieg to write the famous words “Must never be performed!” on the score of his own Symphony in C minor. Svendsen was still a student in Leipzig when he wrote his masterful Symphony No. 1 in 1867.