Siegfried Idyll
As the snow fell during February this year, Berwaldhallen commissioned Andrew Staples to make a film with the Swedish Radio Symphony of Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll. Together with SRSO Music Director Daniel Harding, Staples imagined the piece as a heartwarming love letter not from a composer to his wife but from the players of the SRSO to their absent audience.
Siegfried Idyll is the third film project Berwaldhallen has created with Andrew Staples and Daniel Harding, after Mozart’s Don Giovanni in June 2020 featuring Peter Mattei and Malin Byström, and Bach’s St John Passion.
Staples himself says that the film “tries to capture the aching desire of an entire cultural organization that is reaching out into its environment to connect with its audience across the temporary digital divide. Our aim is to bring the audience closer to the players, to their art, skill and passion while, for the time being at least, the auditorium remains empty.”
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.
Programme
More concerts
Sibelius & Saariaho
Finnish music about love by Sibelius and Saariaho with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, soprano Johanna Wallroth and baritone Karl-Magnus Fredriksson. Conductor Dalia Stasevka.
PÅ MINUTEN GÄSTAR BERWALDHALLEN
The popular Swedish radio show På minuten is being recorded live at Berwaldhallen.
Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony
Maxim Emelyanychev leads the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra in Franz Schubert’s unfinished symphony, Richard Wagner’s Siegfried-Idyll and Maurice Ravel’s Tzigane.