Migros-Culture-Percentage-Classics 180°

When the Swedish Chamber Orchestra was founded in Örebro in 1995, its declared aim was to become one of Europe’s top orchestras within ten years. In 2004, the orchestra was invited to New York and the BBC Proms for the first time, followed by guest appearances at the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg and the Vienna Konzerthaus. In the 30 years of its existence, the ensemble has made a name for itself above all with recordings of symphonies by Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann and Brahms. It makes "classical and romantic music glow like rarely before", raved Deutschlandfunk, and the New York Times praised its "fresh, surprising sound". The orchestra was conducted by Thomas Dausgaard until 2019, when clarinettist and conductor Martin Fröst took over.

When talking about the world’s most innovative musicians, the Swede Martin Fröst should not be left out. As a clarinettist, he has expanded the repertoire for his instrument to include numerous contemporary works and has also recorded baroque, klezmer and tango. His projects in which music, dance and pantomime flow into one another have become particularly well-known, such as "Genesis", a walk through music history, or "Retropia", which takes a look into the future. The expansion of his artistic radius of action almost inevitably led Fröst to the conductor’s podium: he has led the Swedish Chamber Orchestra since 2019. As Artist in Residence, he has given valuable impetus to festivals and ensembles, for example in Frankfurt and Bamberg, with the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich and the Royal Concertgebouw Amsterdam; the latter as the first-ever wind player.

Uppsala-born Hans Ek is one of those artists who can move confidently on all stylistic stages. He has long since made the combination of old and new, of classical, folk, jazz and rock, his trademark. He has arranged numerous jazz numbers for orchestra and put together pieces by the Esbjörn Svensson Trio to form the internationally acclaimed "E.S.T. Symphony", which he himself performed in Vienna, Hamburg and Istanbul. Ek has worked as a conductor and arranger on music projects for films by Thomas Vinterberg and the Oscar-winning "In a Better World" by Danish director Susanne Bier. He was also artistic director of the prestigious Polar Music Prize. In 2021, he was awarded the Swedish Arts Council Prize for his work bridging the gap between past and present.

Swedish composer and arranger Hans Ek combines classical music, jazz, folk and pop in his projects, which has earned him a reputation as a bridge builder between the styles. He wrote the orchestral piece "Mirrors" for Martin Fröst as an innovative approach to listening to Beethoven’s 7th Symphony. It consists of works by composers such as Bach, Handel, Rameau and Mozart, who influenced Beethoven, as well as transitional passages in the style of electronic dance music. A combination of the classical and the contemporary that opens up unusual perspectives and sheds new light on the familiar.

The two Fröst brothers Martin and Göran can be described as holistic musicians: Martin is not only a clarinettist, but also a conductor, conceptual artist and improviser; violist Göran composes and arranges. Their collaborative work "Nomadic Dances" was created with the "Xodus" project in mind, a multimedia concert experience in which music, text, live animations and lighting design form a new whole. The "Nomadic Dances" stand for a cross-border dance experience in every respect, with folkloristic elements from all parts of Europe through to klezmer and jazz.

With each of his nine symphonies, Beethoven reinvented himself as a composer. After the fateful No. 5 and the idyllic No. 6, the Seventh is filled with an excess of kinetic energy. Each of its four movements is based on a basic rhythmic motif that is consistently maintained. This principle turns the slow movement (which, however, is played relatively quickly) into a kind of procession and leads to an intoxicating frenzy with manic traits in the others. Contemporaries were correspondingly divided in their reaction to the work: while Wagner stylized it as the apotheosis of dance, Weber wanted to send Beethoven to an insane asylum for it ...