GOD IN DISGUISE
Ethel Smyth’s vivacious, rhythmic overture to The Boatswain’s Mate is followed by Carl Reinecke’s melodic flute concert with solo flute parts played by Laura Michelin, winner of the 2020 Soloist Award. God in Disguise by Lars-Erik Larsson is one of our most beloved choral works. Hannes Meidal recites Hjalmar Gullberg’s words on humanity and peace, first performed right in the middle of the Second World War. To conclude, we greet the arrival of summer with Hugo Alfvén’s Spring Song and the Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara’s Summer Night.
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.
Anton Holmer har på kort tid etablerat sig som en av Sveriges mest framstående unga dirigenter, även internationellt. Han är sedan hösten 2021 assisterande dirigent vid Orchestre National de Lyon där han regelbundet framträder i olika konsertprojekt. Efter sin Sverigedebut med Jönköpings Sinfonietta våren 2018 har han varit en återkommande gästdirigent hos flera svenska orkestrar, bland annat Sveriges Radios Symfoniorkester, Svenska Kammarorkestern och Dalasinfoniettan. I augusti 2022 debuterar han med Kungliga Filharmonikerna.
Anton tilldelades Crusellstipendiet för unga lovande dirigenter 2021 och har även mottagit stipendier från Kungliga Musikaliska Akademien och Anders Sandrews Stiftelse. Han har deltagit i Masterclasses för renommerade dirigenter såsom Bernard Haitink och Jorma Panula. Han var semifinalist i Malko Competition for Young Conductors i Köpenhamn 2021 och i Donatella Flick LSO Conducting Competition i London 2018.
Han debuterade som Operadirigent våren 2017 i en produktion av Verdi’s Rigoletto vid Operahögskolan i Stuttgart. Föreställningen hyllades av pressen som en ”musikalisk lyckoträff”.
Anton studerade orkesterdirigering vid Staatliche Hochschule für Musik i Stuttgart för Prof. Per Borin. Under studietiden gästade han flera framstående orkestrar bland andra Stuttgarter Kammerorchester och Stuttgarter Philharmoniker.
Han har en bakgrund som organist och fick sin kandidatutbildning vid Kungliga Musikhögskolan i Stockholm och Conservatoire National Supérieure de Lyon. Han har även en masterexamen i solistisk orgel från Musikhögskolan i Stuttgart.
Julia Kretz-Larsson is the assistant first concertmaster of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra since 2015. She is also a member of the chamber music ensemble Spectrum Concerts Berlin who, in addition to having their own concert series at the Berlin Phiharmonic, has performed at venues including Carnegie Hall in New York City and the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. She is a former member of both the Lucerne Festival Orchestra and leader of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra.
She is also an active chamber musician, having performed with Janine Jansen, Isabelle Faust, Cecilia Zilliacus, Torleif Thedéen and others, and played at internationally renowned festivals in Salzburg, Utrecht and Schleswig-Holstein, as well as the Schubertiade in Voralberg and Vinterfest in Mora, Sweden. She has recorded chamber works for labels such as BIS, dB and Harmonia Mundi, and the 2018 album Amanda Maier vol. 3 was awarded a Swedish Grammy Award. As a member of the Julius Stern Piano Trio, she has won prizes at international competitions in Florence, Berlin and Trieste.
Julia Kretz-Larsson teacher violin at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm. She is a Berlin native, has studied under Professor Marianne Boettcher, under Professor Thomas Brandis at the Berlin University of the Arts, and in Prague for Josef Suk.
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.
Sebastian Durán (born in 1989) began to study classical singing at the age of 15 (alongside his cello- and harp studies) in his home town of Kristianstad, in the south of Sweden.
Since graduating from the Malmö Academy of Music in 2013, and the University College of Opera in Stockholm in 2016, Sebastian has been working in opera companies and concert venues such as the Malmö Opera, the Royal Opera in Stockholm, Den Fynske Opera, Copenhagen Opera Festival, Nordic Opera, Oslo Opera Festival, Aldeburgh Festival, National Philharmonic of Ukraine, and Vadstena-Akademien.
He is also a sought-after concert- and oratorio singer in works such as Ein Deutsches Requiem by Johannes Brahms, St Johns Passion and the B-minor mass by Johann Sebastian Bach, Carmina Burana by Carl Orff, and Förklädd gud (A God disguised) by Lars-Erik Larsson.
Sebastian has worked with several acclaimed conductors, including Stefan Solyom, B Tommy Andersson, Cathrine Winnes, Kristiina Poska, Emil Eliasson, and Eva Ollikainen, and has sung with orchestras such as the Royal Swedish Orchestra, Malmö Opera Orchestra and Norrköping Symphony Orchestra.
In September 2018, Sebastian won 1st prize in the Scandinavian/Baltic singing competition ’Voice of the Sea’ (Havets Röst/Meren ääni). He is also a prize-winner in the Bayreuth Competition of 2017, held by the Wagner Society in Gothenburg, Sweden. He also won the jury prize, and the audience prize at the OVIS singing competition in Malmö, Sweden in 2017 and the Barbro Salén Scholarship in 2016.
Flöjtisten Laura Michelin (1996) har sedan ung ålder utmärkt sig nationellt och internationellt och är eftersökt både som solist, kammar- och orkestermusiker. Hon är född i Norrköping och utbildad i Stockholm och München där hon studerat för Tobias Carron respektive Andrea Lieberknecht.
Laura debuterade som solist tillsammans med Sveriges Radios Symfoniorkester 2020 då hon vann det prestigefyllda Solistpriset – Sveriges största pris för unga instrumentalister och sångare. Denna utmärkelse blev ett startskott i karriären som vid det här laget kantas av solistuppdrag med flertalet av Sveriges orkestrar och ensembler. Hon har framträtt på kammarmusikscener över hela landet, spelandes en bred repertoar – inkluderat nyskriven musik tillägnad Laura själv – och ses även som soloflöjtist i Skandinaviens mest framstående symfoniorkestrar. Sedan 2023 är hon stämledare i Sveriges Radios Symfoniorkester.
Innevarande och nästkommande säsong innehåller framföranden av klassisk repertoar såsom Mozart’s, Nielsen’s och Ibert’s flöjtkonserter men även uruppföranden av två nya flöjtkonserter av Britta Byström respektive Benjamin Staern.
Av stipendier Laura tilldelats kan nämnas de från GT Bäckman, Kungliga Musikaliska Akademien och Svenska Frimurarorden
Approximate concert length: 1 hour 30 minutes including intermission
The concert will be broadcasted on Swedish Radio P2 June 6 at 7 pm.
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