arrow

GUSTAV HOLST’S THE PLANETS

Gustav Holst’s The Planets has inspired an abundance of film music, not least John Williams’s soundtrack to the Star Wars films. The Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and their principal conductor Daniel Harding will interpret this stunning and evocative orchestral work, which continues to fascinate the public more than 100 years after its composition. Plus Alban Berg’s poignant song cycle Seven Early Songs with soprano Johanna Wallroth, who has been named Classical Artist of the Year by the radio station P2.

The concert will be broadcasted live in the Swedish Radio P2 on Friday, January 20 at 7:03 pm.


SWEDISH RADIO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA dot 2022/2023
Print

Participants

 

&

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.

Daniel Harding is Music and Artistic Director of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, with whom in 2022 he celebrated his 15-year anniversary. In the 2014/2015 season, he devised and curated the celebrated Interplay Festival, featuring concerts and related inspirational talks with renowned artists and academics. As Artistic Director, he continues this type of influential programming. Harding is also Conductor Laureate of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, with whom he has worked for over 20 years, and Music Director of Youth Music Culture, The Greater Bay Area in China. The 2024/2025 season will be his first as Music Director at the Academia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome.

Harding is a regular visitor to the world’s foremost orchestras, including the Wiener Philharmoniker, Berliner Philharmoniker, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Staatskapelle Dresden and the Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala. In the US, he has appeared with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, The Cleveland Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, and the San Francisco Symphony. A renowned opera conductor, he has led acclaimed productions at the Teatro alla Scala Milan, Wiener Staatsoper, Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, and at the Aix-en-Provence and Salzburg Festivals. He was Music Director of the Orchestre de Paris, the Anima Mundi festival of Pisa, and Principal Guest Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra.

Daniel Harding tours regularly with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, performing at prestigious venues all over Europe and the world, and has recorded several acclaimed and award-winning albums with the orchestra. His tenure as Music and Artistic Director will last throughout the 2024/2025 season. “It is increasingly rare that the relationship between a conductor and an orchestra not only lasts for more than a decade, but keeps growing,” he says about working with the orchestra.

In 2002, Harding was awarded the title Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Government, and in 2017 nominated to the position Officier des Arts et des Lettres. In 2012, he was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music. In 2021, he was appointed Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. Daniel Harding grew up in Oxford, England, and played trumpet before taking up conducting in his late teens. He is also, since 2016, a qualified airline pilot.

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.

Swedish soprano Johanna Wallroth was thrust into the limelight when she took First Prize at the prestigious Mirjam Helin International Singing Competition in 2019.

Initially training as a dancer at the Royal Swedish Ballet School, Wallroth subsequently focused her principal study on voice and went on to graduate from Vienna’s Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst (MDW).  In 2013, Johanna Wallroth made her operatic debut as Barbarina in Le Nozze di Figaro under Arnold Östman at Ulriksdal Palace Theatre, Stockholm. Efter that she has regularly appeared on stages in Sweden and worldwide, for example as Despina in Cosi fan tutte at Schlosstheater Schönbrunn Wien and as Pamina in Die Zauberflöte at Moscow’s Gnesin Academy. In the 19/20 season, Johanna made her role debut as Zerlin  in Don Giovanni to great acclaim in a live-streamed semi-staged performance with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra under Music Director, Daniel Harding.

Already with an enviable experience on the concert platform, Johanna Wallroth has for example performed with Sakari Oramo at Helsinki Music Centre in Mahler, Symphony No 4 and Mozart, Requiem with Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France under Barbara Hannigan. She was soloist on tour to Antwerp, Amsterdam, Dortmund, Köln, Hamburg and Luxembourg with Daniel Harding and the Swedish Radio Orchestra in Mahler, Symphony No 4.

The 2022/23 season opens with a debut at Sweden’s historic Drottningholm Festival as Leocasta in Vivaldi’s Il Giustino with the Drottningholm Theatre Orchestra under George Petrou, and sees her first appearance at Opernhaus Zürich in a ballet production choreographed by Christian Spück based on the Madrigals of Monteverdi and conducted by Christoph Koncz.

Named as Classical Artist in Residence for the 2022/23 season by the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Johanna Wallroth joins the orchestra for several concerts across the season including Berg, Sieben frühe Lieder with Daniel Harding, Mozart arias with Martin Fröst and Schubert Mass in E-flat with Andràs Schiff.

Approximate concert length: 1 h 30 min (with intermission)

The concert will be recorded on camera.