ST. JOHN PASSION
The St John Passion is Johann Sebastian Bach’s interpretation of the story of Jesus’ suffering on the cross as described in the Gospel of John, and the composer’s first passion written in Leipzig. Principal conductor Daniel Harding leads the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Swedish Radio choir and some of our internationally leading vocalists in a concert with music for reflection, grief and reconciliation.
The concert was broadcasted on Berwaldhallen Play and at the Swedish Radio P2 on April 2, 7 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.
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.
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.
Julia Kleiter gave her operatic debut 2004 at Paris Opéra-Bastille as Pamina in Die Zauberflöte conducted by Jiří Kout. During the following ten years she performed the role in many productions in Madrid, Zurich, at the Edinburgh Festival, the Metropolitan Opera in New York, in München and at Salzburg Festival. In 2014 she performed the role again in Paris – this time under Philippe Jordan.
Recent highlights include a live stream of Lehár’s Schön ist die Welt at Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, Contessa in Le Nozze di Figaro in London conducted by Sir John Eliot Gardiner, in Milan and Zurich, Ilia in Idomeneo in Milan, Essen and under Nikolaus Harnoncourt in Graz and Zurich, Donna Anna in semi-staged performances of Don Giovanni on tour with Basler Kammerorchester in Hamburg and Paris, Eva in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg under Kirill Petrenko in Munich, under Philippe Jordan in Paris and under Daniel Barenboim in Berlin. Coming highlights include Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg in Munich, Così fan tutte in Hamburg and Le Nozze di Figaro in Dresden, debuts in Amsterdam in a world creation by Manfred Trojahn and in Brussels in the part of Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier. 2023 are scheduled, among others, Der Freischütz in Hamburg and Munich.
As a concert singer and song recitalist she is guesting in all major concert halls and working with conductors such as Helmut Rilling, Riccardo Muti, Jeffrey Tate, Marc Minkowski, Ivor Bolten, René Jacobs, Christoph Poppen, Daniel Harding or Marek Janowski. Lately she performed Schumanns das Paradies und die Peri in Zürich, Brahms’ Ein deutsches Requiem in London under Luisi, Haydns Schöpfung in Milan and Berlin as well as Bruckners Te Deum in Munich under Mehta or Dvořák’s Requiem under Philippe Herreweghe in Berlin.
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.
The Evangelist
The tenor Andrew Staples is a diligent concert singer who has performed with conductors such as Simon Rattle, Daniel Harding, Andrew Manze and Robin Ticciati. Most recently, he has played Froh in Wagner’s Das Rheingold at the Royal Opera House in London. He also toured Europe with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and Simon Rattle, performing Bach’s St John’s Passion, as well as with the Orchestre de Paris and Daniel Harding, performing Britten’s War Requiem. In addition, he will soon debut at both Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin and the Metropolitan Opera. Andrew Staples is also a frequent guest at Berwaldhallen where he will be performing several times during the season of 2019-2020.
Den tyske barytonen Christian Gerhaher har vigt sin karriär åt konstsången – lieden – tillsammans med sin ständige musikaliske partner, pianisten Gerold Huber. De uppträder regelbundet på de största scenerna världen över, i städer som New York City, Leipzig, Köln, Luxemburg och Milano och på festivaler i exempelvis München, Heidelberg, Luzern och Aix-en-Provence. Gerhaher och Huber undervisar även i lied-interpretation vid Musik- och teaterhögskolan i München och som gästlärare vid Royal Academy of Music i London.
Säsongen 2023/24 ger Gerhaher romanskonserter tillsammans med Gerold Huber i bland annat London, Bern, Wien och Madrid, samt på festivaler i München, Aix-en-Provence och Salzburg. Han återvänder till Berlinerfilharmonikerna i titelrollen i Mendelssohns Elias under ledning av Kirill Petrenko. Dessutom uppträder han med Bostons Symfoniorkester och Gewandhausorkestern i Leipzig, båda gångerna med dirigenten Andris Nelsons. Han medverkar i konsertanta framföranden av Wagners Tannhäuser, Mendelssohn Paulus och Brahms Ein deutsches Requiem i Leipzig och Salzburg. I september 2023 hölls festivalen Liedwoche Elmau för tredje gången, ett evenemang som initierats av Gerhaher och Huber.
Gerhaher har arbetat med dirigenter som Simon Rattle, Daniel Harding, Pierre Boulez och Nikolaus Harnoncourt, och uppträder regelbundet med orkestrar som Londons symfoniorkester, Gewandhausorkestern i Leipzig och Berlinerfilharmonikerna. Han hyllas även för sina sceniska framföranden och har vunnit utmärkelser som Laurence Olivier-priset och teaterpriset Der Faust. På hans rollista finns exempelvis Posa i Verdis Don Carlos, Amfortas i Wagners Parsifal och titelrollerna i Mozarts Don Giovanni, Monteverdis Orfeo och Henzes Der Prinz von Homburg. Titelrollen i Bergs Wozzeck har blivit något av en paradroll.
Andra nämnvärda projekt är exempelvis ett specialarrangemang av Berlioz Les nuits d’été med en stråksextett ledd av Isabelle Faust och ett omfattande konsertprojekt med sånger av Hugo Wolf som gavs i London, Heidelberg, München, Madrid och Salzburg. Han har spelat in flera skivor, varav ett omfattande flerårigt inspelningsprojekt avslutades i september 2021: Robert Schumanns samtliga sånger, självklart inspelade med Gerold Huber.
Jesus
Matthew Rose studied at the Curtis Institute of Music before becoming a member of the Young Artist Programme at Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. In 2006 he made an acclaimed debut at the Glyndebourne Festival Opera as Bottom in Brittens A Midsummer Night’s Dream, for which he received the John Christie Award, and he has since performed at opera houses throughout the world.
He has sung under the baton of Sir Colin Davis, Gustavo Dudamel, Sir Andrew Davis, Vladimir Jurowski, Sir Charles Mackerras, Yannick Nézet-Seguin and Antonio Pappano and is already a critically acclaimed recording artist, winning a Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording for Ratcliffe/Billy Budd. Other recordings include Winterreise with pianist Gary Matthewman and Schwanengesang with Malcolm Martineau (Stone Records).
Highlights of the 2020/21 season include Pulcinella with Vladimir Jurowski and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Beethoven 9 with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and Vasily Petrenko and The Creation with Louis Langrée and Cincinnati Symphony. On the operatic stage Matthew sings Gremin in Eugene Onegin at Garsington Opera.
Concert lenght: 2 hours
The performance is shown simultaneously on medici.tv
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