More than 100 exceptional musicians make up the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, 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.
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. “It is increasingly rare for the relationship between a conductor and an orchestra not only to last for more than a decade, but to keep growing,” Harding says about working with the orchestra, which he has described as his musical family.
The SRSO 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 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. During the pandemic, its livestreamed concerts brought further worldwide attention to the orchestra as it kept giving its audience world-class musical experiences.
The orchestra regularly tours all over Europe and the world. In March 2024, Harding and the SRSO played major works by Mahler, Strauss and Alfvén together with regular musical partner, baritone Christian Gerhaher. Venues included the Elbphilharmonie, Concertgebouw, KKL Luzern, Philharmonie de Paris and Müpa Budapest.
SRSO has an extensive and acclaimed recording catalogue. Recent releases include Jesper Nordin’s triptych Röster, works by Britten featuring Andrew Staples and the SRSO’s solo hornist Chris Parkes, Schönberg’s Violin Concerto with Isabelle Faust, and Mahler’s Symphony No. 5.
The first radio orchestra was founded in 1925, coinciding with Sweden’s first national radio broadcasts. The SRSO assumed its current form in the 1960s and has since had several prominent chief conductors. Two of them, Herbert Blomstedt and Esa-Pekka Salonen, have since been named Conductors Laureate, and continue to perform regularly with the orchestra.
For nearly 100 years, the Swedish Radio Choir has paved the way to the future of Swedish choral singing, inspiring choirs worldwide. The 32 professional choristers form a unique, dynamic instrument hailed by music-lovers and critics all over the world, as well as by the conductors and composers who explore and challenge the choir’s potential.
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. Two of its former Chief Conductors, Tõnu Kaljuste and Peter Dijkstra, were named the choir’s first Conductors Laureate in 2019. 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 is known for its broad repertoire, ranging from European choral classics to groundbreaking new vocal music. The choir has been an important part of the Swedish Radio’s cultural output since the beginning: it was founded in 1925, the same year as Sweden’s inaugural radio broadcasts, and gave its first concert in May that year. In 2010, the Swedish government awarded the Swedish Radio Choir its Special Prize at the Music Export Prize Awards “for putting Swedish choral music in the international spotlight for more than half a century”.
Multiple acclaimed and award-winning albums can be found in the choir’s decades-long record catalogue. Late 2023 saw the release of Chief Conductor Kaspars Putniņš first recording with the choir: Robert Schumann’s Missa sacra, recorded with organist Johan Hammarström.
The Swedish Radio Choir tours regularly in Sweden as well as internationally. To commemorate the choir’s centenary in 2025, it has performed at several venues around the country, including Växjö Cathedral, Lund’s Allhelgona Church, Studio Acusticum in Piteå, and Kiruna Church, among others.