Both the audience on the radio and the listeners in Berwaldhallen in Stockholm should be reached in new ways, according to Andrés Orozco-Estrada. There he wants to, among other things, invite people from the audience to sit next to the musicians on stage, something he has tried before.
The orchestra belongs to the people, without an audience we are nothing, he says.
Those who want to see and hear him work with the Radio Symphony Orchestra will have the chance as early as April next year, but it is in connection with the Baltic Sea Festival at the end of August that he will take up his new position.
Which piece will start, he cannot say yet.
We are working on a program that will be very rhythmic, by a Swedish composer – absolutely – something that shows the character that we will develop together.
"This year's conductor find", wrote Svenska Dagbladet's music critic as early as 2006 when Andrés Orozco-Estrada conducted the Radio Symphony Orchestra for the first time, then as a substitute. He still remembers the special "chemistry" that arose already then. In the spring, he returned to Berwaldhallen without knowing that the week after he would be asked to become the new chief conductor.
But the week went so well that that's what happened. The chemistry was very beautiful and very positive, also with the audience.
Happy orchestra
The Radio Symphony Orchestra not only holds the highest technical and musical quality – it is also a happy orchestra, he thinks, and at the same time describes the Radio Choir as "without exaggeration one of the best in the world”. He feels honored.
It's almost a perfect world – in a way a little scary. I don't want to be too romantic, but this is a very positive environment with people who want to be happy, and in music it makes a huge difference.
Born: 1977 in Medellín, Colombia.
Lives: In Vienna, where he moved in 1997 to study conducting.
Background: Has led, among others, Houston Symphony, Radio Symphony Orchestra in Frankfurt, Wiener Symphoniker, and been the first guest conductor for the London Philharmonic Orchestra. The job in Stockholm he will combine with being music director in Cologne and chief conductor of the Gürzenich Orchestra in the same city at the same time. He is also a professor of conducting at the Vienna Music Academy.
