Celebrating their centenary - Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra

Oslo Concert Hall, home to the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra

The Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra is 100 in 2019, and the orchestra and its chief conductor Vasily Petrenko are spreading the celebrations with tours to Spain and the UK. 

The orchestra's programme for the UK tour in March 2019 includes Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet, Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No.3 and Symphony No.1, Delius’s On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring, Grieg’s Piano Concerto and Sibelius’s Symphony No.5, with Nikolai Lugansky as the soloist in the two concertos. The tour takes in St David's Hall, Cardiff (6/3/2019), Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham (7/3/2019), Symphony Hall, Birmingham (8/3/2019), Leeds Town Hall (9/3/2019) and Sage Gateshead (10/3/2019).

From 29 January to 1 February the orchestra will be in Spain visiting the Palau de la Música Catalana in Barcelona, the Auditorio Nacional de Música in Madrid and the Auditorio de Zaragoza in Zaragoza. Pianist Simon Trpčeski will join the orchestra as the soloist in all four concerts, alongside Oslo Philharmonic's chief conductor Vasily Petrenko. Trpčeski will perform both Johannes Brahms’ piano concertos on the tour.

Though the orchestra was founded in its present form in 1919, it has in fact a long history dating back to 1879 when Edvard Grieg and Johan Svendson founded an orchestra, which eventually developed into a city orchestra which played at Nationaltheatret, providing music for new theatre and giving concerts. A dispute during the First World War led to the orchestra being re-founded as an independent body in 1919.  Since 1977 its home has been the Oslo Concert Hall.

Full details from the Oslo Philharmonic's website with an article about the tour.