Violinist
Johan Dalene came on the scene in the 2000s decade with a series of major international competition victories. While still in his teens, he was signed to the prestigious BIS label.
Dalene was born in Norrköping, Sweden, on August 5, 2000. He took up the violin at age four, and by seven he was performing concertos with symphony orchestras. At 11,
Dalene began taking classes with Per Enoksson at Stockholm's Royal College of Music. He quickly began to notch competition victories in Sweden, and wins or top prizes in the Junior Category of the Menuhin Competition and the Thomas and Evon Cooper International Violin Competition in Oberlin, Ohio, brought him to international attention. He has also won first prizes at competitions in Slovakia, Italy, Denmark (including the major Carl Nielsen Competition when he was 19), and the Czech Republic. His education continued as a student in the Norwegian Crescendo Programme, where he took master classes with
Janine Jansen,
Gidon Kremer, and
Leif Ove Andsnes. Among his other master-class teachers have been
Henning Kraggerud,
Pamela Frank, and Detlef Hahn.
Dalene has benefited from scholarships awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Music and several other bodies, as well as from the loan of a 1736 Stradivarius violin from the Anders Sveaas Charitable Foundation.
Dalene has appeared as soloist with all of the major Scandinavian orchestras as well as with the
Cleveland Orchestra, the
Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, and the
New Japan Philharmonic, and he has played chamber music with
Roland Pöntinen and
Ingrid Andsnes, among others.
Dalene served as artist-in-residence with the
Nörrkoping Symphony Orchestra in the 2018-2019 season and filled the same role with the
Swedish Radio Symphony in 2020-2021. With the
Nörrkoping Symphony, under conductor
Daniel Blendulf, he released a recording of the
Tchaikovsky and Barber violin concertos for BIS in 2020.