Det Norske Solistkor (The Norwegian Soloist's Choir)

The Norwegian Soloists’ Choir occupies a unique position in the music life of Norway. The choir has given over two hundred premier performances of which over seventy have been of works by Norwegian composers. The choir was established in 1950 by the Norwegian Soloists’ Society with the aim of becoming an elite ensemble for performing choral music to the highest possible standard. The choir’s first conductor was Knut Nystedt, who led the ensemble for forty years.

Since 1990 the choir has sung under the leadership of Grete Pedersen, internationally acclaimed for her stylistically assured and musically convincing performances. Through a great number of concerts in Norway and abroad, recordings for radio and television, and CD recordings, she has become one of the most noted and sought-after conductors in the Nordic countries.

The members of the Norwegian Soloists’ Choir are professionally trained, hand-picked singers all of whom are potential soloists in their respective genres. The choir engages twenty-six singers on time-limited contracts, a model which allows the number of singers to be varied according to the repertoire of a particular project. This gives both flexibility and stability and permits the choir to achieve its overall object at all times: the best possible musical results. The Norwegian Soloists’ Choir performs in Norway and in other countries, at venues ranging from concert halls and churches to ball rooms and bus garages. The choir maintains a youthful profile, receptive to and willing to perform newly written works, while at the same time retaining a fundament of classical works from the Nordic and international choral repertoire.

The Norwegian Soloists´ Choir records regularly for BIS Records. Their recording of Edvard Grieg’s Choral Music (2007) received international critical acclaim. Other succesful recordings are: ’White Night – impressions of Norwegian folk music’ (2010), ’Im Herbst’, with romantic choral music of Schubert and Brahms (2011), ’Refractions’ (2013) with music of Valen, Berg, Messiaen and Webern and ‘Rós. Songs of Christmas’ (2014), with music of Hildegard von Bingen, Praetorius and Nordic Christmas repertoire, ‘Meins Lebens Licht’ with works by Knut Nystedt and Bach (2015) and ‘As Dreams’, featuring contemporary choral compositions by Per Norgard, Alfred Janson, Kaija Saariaho, Helmut Lachenmann and Iannis Xenakis (2016). On their most recent CDs the choir performs the motets of Bach (2017, Diapason d’Or de l’Année in France) and music for choir by the Norwegian composer Alfred Janson (‘The wind blows’, 2018, editors choice Gramophone).

Det Norske Solistkor

Grete Pedersen