A tightly knit ensemble of 38 regular members, the Swedish Chamber Orchestra made its USA and UK debuts with Thomas Dausgaard in 2004 performing at the London Proms and Lincoln Center, Mostly Mozart Festival. The New York Times wrote of that performance: “It has been a longstanding complaint in the classical music world that as recordings and jet travel have shrunk the globe, an international sound has been fostered that has filtered out regional differences in timbre and interpretation ... And every now and then an orchestra comes along with a sound that is surprising and fresh. The Swedish Chamber Orchestra, led by its music director, Thomas Dausgaard, produced a distinctive and consistently vibrant sound.” Since 2004 the Swedish Chamber Orchestra has toured regularly throughout Europe and made its debut in Japan. Recent highlights have included a major 2012 European tour and 2013 New York Lincoln Center performance with Nina Stemme in a specially created programmed entitled “Love, Hope and Destiny” followed by performances in Berlin and Vienna in Spring 2014 with pianist Alice Sara Ott. In August 2014 Dausgaard and the ensemble will perform the complete Mendelssohn symphonies in residence at the Schlweswig Holstein Festival with concerts in Kiel, Hamburg and Lübeck for which they are joined by the young Canadian pianist, Jan Lisiecki who will perform both piano concertos by Mendelssohn. They return to the international stage in November on a tour with H K Gruber and soprano Angelika Kirschlager performing Kurt Weill’s “Seven Deadly Sins” in Vienna and on tour in Germany. In December 2015 the Swedish Chamber Orchestra will install itself in the completely refurbished concert hall in Örebro and, together with Thomas Dausgaard, will launch a new project entitled “Genesis – Bach’s Brandenburg Reborn.” The three year project will focus on six new commissions inspired by the Brandenburg concertos from leading international composers Uri Caine, Brett Dean, Anders Hillborg, Olga Neuwirth, Steve Mackey and Marc Antony Turnage. Each concerto will feature an international soloist and the orchestra will perform the original concertos alongside their new counterparts both at home in Sweden and extensively on tour with the support of the European Concert Hall Organisation. The Swedish Chamber Orchestra continues to expand its repertoire and open doors to new challenges; together with Dausgaard the ensemble has recorded the complete Beethoven Orchestral works for Simax and the complete Schumann symphonies for BIS, both of which received outstanding reviews. Other recent releases on BIS include recordings of symphonic works by Schubert, Dvorak, Tchaikovsky and Bruckner as well as a 2013 release of Wagner which featured the Wesendonck Lieder with Nina Stemme as soloist. The ensemble’s current major project for BIS is the complete symphonies of Brahms. Reviewing their first release in the new series Germany’s MDR Radio commented “When you want to make a mark with a recording of Brahms' first Symphony nowadays, then you have to offer something particularly special - an original framework and highly extravagant quality. Both can be found on this new CD by the Swedish Chamber Orchestra from Örebro …a really impressive example of the high level of maturity achieved by this exceptional orchestra.”
