CHRISTMAS CONCERT 2022
In Berwaldhallen, Christmas is celebrated with traditional classical music. The Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Swedish Radio Choir and the sisters Johanna and Rebecka Wallroth welcome you to a sparkling evening.
The concert on Thursday December 22 will be broadcast live on Sveriges Radio P2 and on Berwaldhallen Play at 8.30 pm.
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.
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.
Conductor Marie Rosenmir has a background as a pianist, organist, and opera singer. She studied at Malmö Academy of Music, the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, and the opera program at the University of Gothenburg.
Rosenmir started her career as a conductor at the Gothenburg Opera and later at Folkoperan in Stockholm. In 2017, she made her debut at the Royal Opera in Stockholm with Mozart’s The Magic Flute. Since then, Rosenmir has conducted the foremost orchestras in Sweden, as well as the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in London, the Moravian Philarmonic Orchestra in Olumouc, Bohuslav Martinu Philarmonic Orchestra in Zlin, the Paris Mozart Orchestra, Odense Symphonic Orchester, Kristianstads Symphonic Orchestra, and the Collegium Musicum in Bergen.
Marie Rosenmir’s repertoire stretches from the 18th until today. She holds a special fondness for Swedish music, and has premiered several works both as a conductor and as a singer. Rosenmir is also one of the founders of Inversion, a group consisting of female composers and conductors who strive towards a broadening of the audience for contemporary music. Inversion also commissions and performs contemporary music by female composers from the Nordic countries.
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.
Rebecka Wallroth made her debut this summer at the Verbier Festival where she sang Cherubino in a concert version of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro. In October, she made her debut with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra in Boulanger’s Faust et Hélène conducted by Daniel Harding. The 2023/2024 season included debuts at the Wigmore Hall in London, in DR Koncerthuset with the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra, and Alma Mahler’s Seven Songs with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra.
Wallroth is now in her second season with Berlin Staatsoper Unter den Linden’s International Opera Studio, where she has performed the roles of the Cretan woman in Mozart’s Idomeneo, Second Handmaiden of Dircé in Cherubini’s Medée and Auntie in Janáček’s Jenůfa. This season at the Staatsoper Berlin she can be seen in the roles of Cherubino, Mercedes in Carmen and Carlotta in Die schweigsame Frau.
2023 Rebecka performed the role of Lilly in the world premiere of The Ghost Factory by Daniel Nelson at Vadstena Castle and was also a finalist in the Queen Sonja Singing Competition. In 2022 she won the Karl Staud Music Prize and the Gesangwettbewerb Feruccio Tagliavini in Austria, where she was also awarded the Karl Böhm Prize for best Mozart interpretation.
Director of Swedish Radio Choir & Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra.
Programme
Approximate concert length: 1 h 20 min (no intermission)
Tickets
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