|
MINNEAPOLIS, MN (December 5, 2025) — As January temperatures plunge, Minneapolis’ Orchestra Hall will radiate light, warmth and music as part of the Minnesota Orchestra’s second Nordic Soundscapes Festival, running from January 3-17. Led by Music Director Thomas Søndergård, the festival will explore the music of Nordic artists from Björk to Sibelius and Salonen to Nielsen, while audiences dive into an immersive sampling of lobby activities spotlighting Scandinavian culture, cuisine, cocktails and crafts.
The festival opens on Saturday, January 3 at 7 p.m. with an inventive program conducted by Steve Hackman that synthesizes Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra with music from Icelandic singer-songwriter Björk’s first three albums, spotlighting three vocalists with the Orchestra.
The following weekend, January 8 at 11 a.m. and January 9 at 8 p.m., Søndergård takes the podium to conduct James Ehnes in the haunting Sibelius Violin Concerto, bookended by Esa-Pekka Salonen’s silvery tone poem Nyx and Carl Nielsen’s First Symphony. The weekend is capped by a chamber music program on Saturday, January 10, at 7 p.m., in which James Ehnes will join Minnesota Orchestra musicians in Sibelius’ String Quartet in D minor. Musicians will also perform Laura Valborg Aulin’s String Quartet No. 1 in F major and Otto Mortensen’s Quintette for Winds.
In the final weekend of the festival, on Friday, January 16 at 8 p.m., and Saturday,
January 17 at 7 p.m., American soprano Lauren Snouffer performs Hans Abrahamsen’s
song cycle Let me tell you, a retelling of Hamlet from Ophelia’s perspective, while Thomas
Søndergård conducts Wilhelm Stenhammar’s Excelsior! and Sibelius’ First Symphony.
Concertgoers are invited to arrive early to Orchestra Hall throughout the festival to enjoy a
winter sanctuary of activities celebrating Nordic culture, cuisine, cocktails and crafts.
The outdoor Cargill Commons will be outfitted with firepits and seating options. The indoor
Target Atrium will transform into a Nordic Soundscapes lounge and Marketplace with food,
beverages and wares from Krown Bakery, Ingebretsen’s, Vikre Distillery and Danish Teak.
Throughout the lobby, Nordic partner organizations—including the American Swedish Institute, Danish American Center, FinnFest USA, Icelandic Hekla Club, Museum of Danish America and Norway House—will showcase their organizations and offer craft demonstrations and free performances of folk and choral music traditions. (See calendar listing for details.)
STEVE HACKMAN’S BARTÓK X BJÖRK
(January 3, 2026)
Conductor Steve Hackman leads an exploration of the avant-garde and adventurous in this program that synthesizes the music of two of the 20th century’s most ingenious musicians: Iceland’s Björk and Hungary’s Bartók, each thrilling rulebreakers in their genres. Béla Bartók’s dynamic Concerto for Orchestra is fused with music from Björk’s first three albums, including songs like “Human Behaviour,” “Hyperballad” and “Army of Me.” The Orchestra will be joined by vocal soloists Erin Bentlage, India Carney and Malia Civetz.
A composer, conductor, arranger, and producer, Steve Hackman is known for creating innovative orchestral fusions, merging the music of Brahms and Radiohead, or Mahler and Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur.
SØNDERGÅRD AND EHNES
(January 8-9, 2026)
It was an episode of Sesame Street featuring violinist Itzhak Perlman that sparked James
Ehnes’ interest in the violin as a child growing up in Canada. He started the instrument at age 4 and by 13 was performing with the Montreal Symphony. Today, as he embarks on a 50th birthday recital tour, he is a Grammy Award-winner who was named Gramophone’s Artist of the Year in 2021. Performing regularly with the Minnesota Orchestra since 1993, Ehnes returns in these concerts with a pillar of the violin repertoire that he has never played at Orchestra Hall: Sibelius’ vast Violin Concerto written in 1903. Ehnes’ performance of the work—which he recorded in 2024 with the Bergen Philharmonic—has been described by Gramophone as “all poetry and refinement,” and by The Guardian as “Ehnes at his sublime best.”
Thomas Søndergård bookends the program with two pivotal pieces from Nordic composers writing more than a century apart. Finland’s Esa-Pekka Salonen wrote Nyx in 2011 and scored it for a very large orchestra. Named after an elusive goddess in Greek mythology, the work is his attempt “to write complex counterpoint for almost one hundred musicians playing... at full throttle without losing clarity. Not an easy task but a fascinating one,” he said. Denmark’s Carl Nielsen wrote his First Symphony in 1891 when he was a second violinist with Royal Danish Orchestra National. A critic at the work’s premiere in Copenhagen noted Nielsen’s immense potential, writing that the work “seems to presage a coming storm of genius” and describing it as “unsettled and brutal... and yet nevertheless so wonderfully innocent and unknowing, as if seeing a child playing with dynamite.”
SØNDERGÅRD CONDUCTS SIBELIUS
(January 16-17, 2026)
In the concluding week of the festival, Søndergård conducts a program encompassing a lesser-known historical gem, a stunning modern-day song cycle and a first symphony that bore its creator’s distinctive sound. Swedish composer Wilhelm Stenhammar was one of the pre-eminent Scandinavian composers and pianists of his time, but his work never achieved the international stature of his Nordic contemporaries Grieg, Nielsen or Sibelius. His Excelsior!, which bursts with urgency and drama, premiered as a concert overture in 1896.
Contemporary Danish composer Hans Abrahamsen’s Let me tell you is based on a book of the same name by Paul Griffiths. A retelling of Hamlet from Ophelia’s perspective, the work uses only the 481 word vocabulary given to Ophelia by Shakespeare. Premiered by the Berlin Philharmonic, the vocal-orchestral work was called “a spellbindingly beautiful song cycle” by The Guardian and won Abrahamsen the prestigious Grawemayer Award in 2016. Grammy Award-nominated American soprano Lauren Snouffer makes her Minnesota Orchestra debut in the work.
Finnish composer Jean Sibelius was 34 years old when he completed his First Symphony in 1899. He was deeply influenced by Tchaikovsky, whose Pathétique Symphony was performed in Helsinki in the 1890s, but Sibelius’ early symphony still resonates with the distinguishing hallmarks that would eventually earn him a reputation as one of the most significant symphonists of his time. These performances mark Thomas Søndergård’s first time conducting a Sibelius symphony with the Minnesota Orchestra.
| 
