The Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra owes its existence to a merger of two radio orchestras in 1965, and the appointment of none other than Sergiu Celibidache as principal conductor set standards from the start. His successors were also handpicked: Herbert Blomstedt (now an honorary conductor), Esa-Pekka Salonen, Yevgeny Svetlanov and Manfred Honeck. Since 1979, the orchestra has performed in Stockholm's Berwald Hall; all concerts are broadcast live on Swedish Radio. The orchestra is not only the main player of the Baltic Sea Festival in Stockholm, but also regularly goes on tour. And it does so with success: it "can easily play in the top European league," judged the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung. The chief conductor since 2007 is the British conductor Daniel Harding. CLOSE

Daniel Harding was just 18 years old when he became Simon Rattle's assistant in Birmingham; shortly thereafter he moved to Berlin to join Claudio Abbado. He soon assumed responsibility himself: first as principal conductor of the Trondheim Symphony Orchestra, then with the Kammerphilharmonie Bremen. The Mahler Chamber Orchestra, with which he has been closely associated since 1997, appointed him honorary conductor for life in 2011 - when he was 36. Since 2007 he has held the principal post at the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, but continues to be engaged by the leading orchestras of Vienna, Berlin and London. Harding has not only received a number of musical awards (Diapason d'Or, Gramophone Award, Premio Abbiati), but was also appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2021. CLOSE

Baritone Christian Gerhaher is without a doubt one of the most distinguished singers of our time. Since his Carnegie and Wigmore Hall debuts a quarter of a century ago, he has been in demand as a Lied interpreter around the globe, usually alongside his trusted piano partner Gerold Huber. The two were showered with awards for their recording of Schubert's lied cycles, and in 2021 they released Schumann's complete lyrical works on CD. Gerhaher is also at home in oratorio and on the opera stage, singing Bach, Wagner and Mozart as well as Berg, Holliger and Rihm, and has also held a professorship for lieder singing in Munich since 2022. His released "Lyrisches Tagebuch" (Lyrical Diary), a combination of biography and reflections on his work, demonstrates how thoroughly the trained physician reflects on the significance of what he does. CLOSE

Along with Wilhelm Stenhammar, Hugo Emil Alfvén is considered the most important Swedish composer of the late Romantic period. Stylistically, he is close to the work of Richard Strauss, but besides symphonic works he wrote only one tone poem: "Eine Schärensage" (1904). In it, as in many other compositions, Alfvén's love of the sea and the coastal landscape of his homeland is reflected. The bright, friendly tones of his best-known work, "Midsummer Night," written the year before, are contrasted here with a stirring, darkly grounded depiction of nature as a mirror of human existence.

As a song composer, Gustav Mahler is a special case. Not only are many of his settings additionally or even exclusively available in an orchestral version; he also differs from his colleagues in the selection of texts. Mahler preferred poetry from the early Romantic collection "Des Knaben Wunderhorn," whose naïve, artless tone gave him every freedom for the most differentiated musical composition. It was not until late, from 1901, that he set to music the poems of Friedrich Rückert, texts by a renowned author. He composed both individual songs and a cycle, the "Kindertotenlieder".

Of course, everyone knows the beginning of Richard Strauss' "Zarathustra," thanks to cinema and advertising. But the tone poem by the 32-year-old, who caused a sensation as court conductor in Munich at the time, has much more to offer: a duel of two keys, a tongue-in-cheek fugue, and a veritable cornucopia of tonal colors produced by an orchestra of enormous proportions. What fascinated Strauss about Nietzsche's writing was its enthusiasm for progress, combined with fierce attacks on German "Spiessertum". Strauss found impressive musical images for both, the optimism and the attack.