The Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra is known worldwide as one of Europe’s most versatile orchestras with an exciting and varied repertoire and a constant striving to break new ground The multi-award-winning orchestra has been praised for its exceptional, wide-ranging musicianship as well as collaborations with the world’s foremost composers, conductors and soloists.

Permanent home of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra since 1979 is Berwaldhallen, the Swedish Radio’s concert hall. In addition to the audience in the hall, the orchestra reaches many many listeners on the radio and the web and through it´s partnership with EBU. Several concerts are also broadcast and streamed on Berwaldhallen Play and with Swedish Television, offering the audience more opportunities to come as close as possible to one of the world’s top orchestras.

“The orchestra has a unique combination of humility, sensibility and musical imagination”, says Daniel Harding, Music Director of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra since 2007. “I have never had a concert with the orchestra where they haven’t played as though their lives depended on it!”

The first radio orchestra was founded in 1925, the same year that the Swedish Radio Service began its broadcasts. The Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra received its current name in 1967. Through the years, the orchestra has had several distinguished Music Directors. Two of them, Herbert Blomstedt and Esa-Pekka Salonen, have since been appointed Conductors Laureate.

Julia Kretz-Larsson, violin, has studied with Marianne Boettcher and Thomas Brandis in Berlin and with Josef Suk in Prague. With the Julius Stern Piano Trio, she has won various awards at international competitions. She is a member of the chamber music ensemble Spectrum Concerts Berlin, which has its own concert series in the Berliner Philharmonie Kammermusiksaal and with which she also played in halls such as Carnegie Hall in New York and Concertgebouw Amsterdam. In 2006, Julia Kretz-Larsson became a member of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, led by Claudio Abbado, and since 2008 she has been a member of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, from 2011 as conductor. Julia has been the alternate first concertmaster in the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra since 2015 and is a teacher at the Royal Academy of Music in Stockholm.Julia has regularly played chamber music concerts with several international artists and has performed at festivals such as the Salzburger Festspiele, the International Chamber Music Festival Utrecht, Julian Rachlin and Friends, Schubertiade, the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival and the Winter Festival. She has recorded chamber music for, among others, BIS, NAXOS, dB Productions, Harmonia Mundi and has won the music award ” Grammis” for the recording with music by Amanda Maier.

Swedish mezzo-soprano Ann Hallenberg regularly appears in major opera houses and festivals, including Teatro alla Scala Milan, Teatro la Fenice Venice, Teatro Real Madrid, Theater an der Wien, Opernhaus Zürich, Opéra National Paris, Théâtre de La Monnaie Brussels, Netherlands Opera Amsterdam, Bayerische Staatsoper München, Staatsoper Berlin, Salzburg Festival, Salzburg Whitsun Festival and Edinburgh Festival. She has recorded more than 40 CD and DVD. At the International Opera Awards in London in May 2016 her solo-CD “Agrippina” won the award for “Best Operatic Recital”. This was her second win in the category, having also won in 2014.

Her operatic repertoire includes a large number of roles in operas by Rossini, Mozart, Gluck, Handel, Vivaldi, Monteverdi, Purcell, Bizet and Massenet. She has performed with orchestras such as the Berliner Philharmoniker, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, Orchestre national de France, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, London Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, Barcelona Symphony Orchestra, Russian National Orchestra, Swedish Radio Orchestra, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and the Danish Radio Orchestra.

Upcoming highlights include the title role in Agrippina at the Drottningholm Festival, Dejanira in Hercules at the Handel Festival in Karlsruhe and Galatea in Aci, Galatea e Polifemo at Opéra de Lyon. Concert highlights will include Beethoven‘s Missa Solemnis with Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Haydn’s Il ritorno di Tobia at the Müpa Festival Budapest, Berlioz’ L’enfance du Christ and Handel’s Donna, che in ciel, both under the baton of Sir John Eliot Gardiner.