The Iceland Symphony Orchestra is the national orchestra of Iceland and one of the leading institutions in the country’s cultural scene. The orchestra’s home is the award-winning Harpa Concert Hall in Reykjavík. Widely praised for its performances and recordings, the orchestra presents a full season of subscription series each year, school and family concerts, and concerts devoted to modern music.

Eva Ollikainen is the chief conductor of the orchestra and Vladimir Ashkenazy holds the position of conductor laureate. The Iceland Symphony Orchestra offers a variety of programmes, spanning everything from well-known classics to world premiere performances of new works by Icelandic and international composers.

A commitment to performing new Icelandic music has been widely praised and recordings on Deutsche Grammophon, BIS, Chandos, Naxos and Sono Luminus include accolades such as MIDEM awards and GRAMMY Award nominations for Best Orchestral Performance.

The Iceland Symphony Orchestra has appeared widely throughout Europe and beyond, including performances at the BBC Proms, the Wiener Musikverein, New York’s Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center. The majority of the orchestra’s concerts are broadcast live on radio by the National Broadcasting Service and one of the orchestra’s concert series is televised live on National TV.

For more information, visit en.sinfonia.is.

Photo: Ari Magg

Conductor Bjarte Engeset gained his diploma at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki in 1989, where he studied with professor Jorma Panula. In 1991 he was chosen as a member of the Tanglewood Music Center conducting seminar where his teachers included Seiji Ozawa, Gustav Meier, Simon Rattle and Marek Janowski, among others.

Bjarte Engeset has been music director of the Tromsø Symphony Orchestra and The Norwegian Wind Ensemble, artistic director of Northern Norway´s Northern Lights Festival and Opera Nord, as well as permanent guest conductor of the Flemish Radio Orchestra. From 2007 to 2012 he was chief conductor and artistic director of Sweden’s Dalasinfoniettan, having contributed to the outstanding high level of the orchestra; he is currently music director of the Royal Norwegian Navy Orchestra.

Engeset has performed and toured extensively working with many leading orchestras and artists worldwide. His discography includes more than 30 best-selling recordings, including an eight-disc set of Grieg’s complete orchestral works on Naxos (8.508015). His research and editorial work within the Norsk musikkarv (‘Norwegian Music Heritage’) project, especially on the orchestral music of Grieg, Svendsen, Irgens-Jensen and Tveitt, has been pivotal.

In the Light of the Midnight Sun – Bjarte Engeset talks to Jeremy Siepmann