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Gothenburg (Göteborg), Sweden's second-largest city, is home to the oldest and most prestigious professional orchestra in the country. The
Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra's extensive schedule includes roughly 100 concerts in their home concert hall, international tours, recordings, and outreach programs for school children. The orchestra was named "Sweden's National Orchestra" in 1997 by the Swedish government.
The
Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra was founded in 1905 as an orchestral association, the
Göteborgs Orkesterförening, with funding from local industries. The first concerts were given the same year under the baton of Heinrich Hammer. Composer Wilhelm Stenhammar was principal conductor from 1907 until 1922. Stenhammar was a firm leader and an innovator as a symphony director, with a gift for orchestra building and a wide-ranging interest in new repertory. Reasoning that children benefited from exposure to orchestral music, he was among the first conductors anywhere to establish regular school outreach concerts. This has resulted in symphony concerts becoming one of the favorite forms of musical entertainment in Gothenburg and the surrounding area. Stenhammar and the
Gothenburg Symphony were the first to introduce the music of Danish composer
Carl Nielsen to Sweden.
Stenhammar's successors as music director have included
Tor Mann, Ture Rängstrom,
Dean Dixon,
Charles Dutoit, and
Sixten Ehrling.
Neeme Järvi served as principal conductor from 1982-2004, during which time the orchestra began a long association with the BIS record company, making both
Järvi and the orchestra world-famous. Following
Järvi as principal conductor were
Mario Venzago from 2004-2007 and
Gustavo Dudamel from 2007-2012. In 2017,
Santtu-Matias Rouvali was named principal conductor, with a contract running through 2025. Since 1987, the orchestra has toured throughout Sweden, Europe, Asia, and the U.S., regularly performing in festivals in Sweden and abroad.
An early obstacle for the orchestra, the lack of a suitable concert hall, was remedied in 1935 with the opening of the Göteborgs Konserthus, a municipally financed hall. This hall is compared favorably with such venues as Boston's Orchestra Hall, Carnegie Hall, and the Amsterdam Concertgebouw as one of the best-sounding concert halls in the world. The richness and clarity of the sound is one of the factors that have set the high standards the
Gothenburg Symphony has met.
The
Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra has produced dozens of recordings, mainly on the BIS and Deutsche Grammophon labels, including complete cycles of music with orchestra by
Sibelius,
Tubin,
Nielsen,
Grieg, Borodin, among others, as well as the
complete operas by
Rachmaninov. In 2019, under
Rouvali, the orchestra released the album
Sibelius: Symphony No. 1; En Saga on the Alpha label.