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EPIPHANY CONCERT 2023

Once again, the time has come for Berwaldhallen’s traditional Festive Epiphany concert. Welcome inside to enjoy a musical firework of atmospheric music, gala and glamour. The Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Swedish Radio Choir, together with the brilliant soloists Katija Dragojevic and Tobias Westman, offer a surprisingly packed program as usual. All under the direction of conductor Johannes Gustavsson.

Friday’s concert  will be broadcast live on Sveriges Radio P2 and recorded for SVT. The concert will be broadcasted on SVT on January 7, 19.00.


SWEDISH RADIO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

dot SWEDISH RADIO CHOIR

dot 2022/2023

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Conductor- and solist change: Johannes Gustavsson replaces Alondra de la Parra as conductor and Tobias Westman replaces Joachim Bäckström.

Participants

 

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The Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra is a multiple-award-winning ensemble renowned for its high artistic standard and stylistic breadth, as well as collaborations with the world’s finest composers, conductors, and soloists. It regularly tours all over Europe and the world and has an extensive and acclaimed recording catalogue.

Daniel Harding has been Music Director of the SRSO since 2007, and since 2019 also its Artistic Director. His tenure will last throughout the 2024/2025 season. Two of the orchestra’s former chief conductors, Herbert Blomstedt and Esa-Pekka Salonen, have since been named Conductors Laureate, and continue to perform regularly with the orchestra.

The Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra performs at Berwaldhallen, concert hall of the Swedish Radio, and is a cornerstone of Swedish public service broadcasting. Its concerts are heard weekly on the Swedish classical radio P2 and regularly on national public television SVT. Several concerts are also streamed on-demand on Berwaldhallen Play and broadcast globally through the EBU.

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32 professional choristers make up the Swedish Radio Choir: a unique, dynamic instrument hailed by music-lovers and critics all over the world. The Swedish Radio Choir performs at Berwaldhallen, concert hall of the Swedish Radio, as well as on tours all over the country and the world. Also, they are heard regularly by millions of listeners on Swedish Radio P2, Berwaldhallen Play and globally through the EBU.

The award-winning Latvian conductor Kaspars Putniņš was appointed Chief Conductor of the Swedish Radio Choir in 2020. Since January 2019, its choirmaster is French orchestral and choral conductor Marc Korovitch, with responsibility for the choir’s vocal development.

The Swedish Radio Choir was founded in 1925, the same year as Sweden’s inaugural radio broadcasts, and gave its first concert in May that year. Multiple acclaimed and award-winning albums can be found in the choir’s record catalogue. Late 2023 saw the release of Kaspars Putniņš first album with the choir: Robert Schumann’s Missa sacra, recorded with organist Johan Hammarström.

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Johannes Gustavsson originally trained as a violist, his strong passion for conducting and excellent leadership skills led him to study conducting at the Norwegian Academy of Music with Ole Kristian Ruud and Olav Anton Thommessen, Jorma Panula and Simon Streatfield. Gustavsson works regularly with all major Nordic orchestras, being in demand as an interpreter of extensive symphonic and operatic repertoire. As a keen supporter of contemporary music, Gustavsson has conducted over 50 premiers of Nordic orchestral music.

Throughout his career, he has held senior conducting posts at the Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra, the Västerås Sinfonietta, the Nordic Chamber Orchestra, and was chief conductor at the Wermland Opera and at the Oulu Symphony Orchestra until 2021. Together with Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Gustavsson has had a collaboration for over 20 years, resulting in over 30 concerts and a plethora of recordings.

Johannes Gustavsson has been a prizewinner at the Solti Conducting Competition in Frankfurt and the Toscanini Competition in Parma, and was the first artist to be awarded both the Swedish Conductor’s Prize and the Herbert Blomstedt Award.

Malin Broman is the first concertmaster of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra since 2008. She served as artistic director of Musica Vitae in 2015–2020, premiering over 20 works and touring and recording extensively. In 2019, she succeeded Sakari Oramo as artistic director of the Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra.

As a guest leader, she has been invited to perform with ensembles such as the London Symphony Orchestra, Mahler Chamber Orchestra and the Philharmonia Orchestra. As combined soloist and leader she has performed with the Tapiola Sinfonietta, Nordic Chamber Orchestra, Trondheim Soloists and ACO Collective. Soloist highlights include performances with the Gothenburg Symphony, Copenhagen Phil, BBC Scottish Symphony, Academy of St Martin-in-the Fields, and the Swedish Radio Orchestra, working with such conductors as Neeme Järvi, Andrew Manze and Daniel Harding.

In recent years, she has premiered concertos by Daniel Börtz, Britta Byström, Andrea Tarrodi and Daniel Nelson. She has recorded over 30 albums, including concertos by Carl Nielsen and Britta Byström. Recent releases include an album with music by Laura Netzel, and Stockholm Diary with the Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra. Her recording of Mendelssohn’s double concerto together with pianist Simon Crawford-Phillips and Musica Vitae was Grammy nominated in 2019.

She received much acclaim for her recording of Felix Mendelssohn’s string octet in the spring of 2020, where she played all eight parts herself. She has since made two similar recordings: Britta Byström’s octet A Room of One’s Own, and Johan Halvorsens Passacaglia recorded with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra’s solo contrabassist Rick Stotijn.

In 2001, she founded the Change Music Festival in Kungsbacka. She is also co-founder of Kungsbacka Piano Trio, with which she had played more than 700 concerts all ove the world, and of Stockholm Syndrome Ensemble which is made up of some of Europe’s most brilliant chamber musicians.

In 2008, Malin was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music. The Kungsbacka Piano Trio has received the prestigious Interpret Prize of the Royal Academy of Music. In 2019, she was awarded H.M. The King’s Medal. She is currently Professor of Viola at Edsberg Institute of Music in Stockholm. She plays a 1709 Stradivarius violin and a 1861 Bajoni viola, both generously loaned by the Järnåker Foundation.

Ella Petersson is the head of music and language at the Swedish Radio P2. Prior to this, Petersson has been the musical editor at SVT, in charge of the classical music and music documentaries, and a well-known host for several TV and radio shows.

Approximate concert length: 2 h 10 min (with intermission)

Program

Leonard Bernstein: overture from West Side Story
Federico Chueca: Tango de la Menegilda from La Gran Vìa
Kerby Shaw: Celtic Dance
Carl Orff: Reie from Carmina Burana
Carl Orff: In trutina from Carmina Burana
Manuel de Falla: Danza ritual del Fuego from El amor brujo
Astor Piazzolla: Yo soy Maria from Maria de Buenos Aires
Joby Talbot: The weeding cake from Like water for chocolate
Leonard Bernstein: Maria from West Side Story

Intermission

Arturo Marquez: Danzón nr 2
Pjotr Tjajkovskij: Kuda kuda kuda from Eugen Onegin
Nils Lindberg: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day from O, mistress mine
Antonio Vivaldi: Sento in seno ur Il Giustino
Joby Talbot: Campfires from Like water for cocholate
Alban Berg: Die Nachtigall: für 16 Stimmen from Sieben frühe Lieder
Luigi Denza: Funiculi funicula
Emmerich (Imre) Kalman: Weisst du es noch (Heller Jubel) from The Gypsy Princess
Igor Stravinskij: Berceuse & final from the Firebird suite