The orchestra
is one of the
best of its kind.
Since 1973
The Norwegian National Youth Orchestra is renowned for its high musical quality, and is considered to be among the best of its kind in Europe. Every year, the orchestra is reassembled by auditioning highly qualified music students aged from 18 to 28. Members are recruited from all over Norway, as well as from Nordic and European places of higher education.
Ever since its inception in 1973, the Norwegian National Youth Orchestra has arranged an intense summer course in Elverum in Norway, giving some 100 students the opportunity to work with tutors, conductors and soloists of a high international level. Each season the orchestra presents concert programmes at the Elverum Festival (Festspillene i Elverum) and at other venues and events at home and abroad. In addition to its high musical level, the orchestra is also renowned for its excellent social atmosphere and educational environment.
The Norwegian National Youth Orchestra was founded by the inspiring musicians Leif Jørgensen (former concert master of the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra), Harry Kvebæk (former solo trumpeter of the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra), and Karsten Andersen (former chief conductor of the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra). The goal of the orchestra is to provide students bound for a professional career with the experience of playing in a full symphony orchestra, performing major works from the standard repertoire. The Norwegian National Youth Orchestra aims to be the leading recruiting institution for the country’s professional orchestras; about half of Norway’s professional orchestral musicians today have attended the course. Students participate year after year and several of the orchestra’s current members are actually second-generation participants!
The Norwegian National Youth Orchestra has toured all over the world and played together with some of the world’s most acclaimed soloists and conductors. In recent years the orchestra has visited the Summer Classics at Copenhagen’s Tivoli Gardens a number of times, and during the Young Euro Classic festival in Berlin, the Norwegian National Youth Orchestra was described as one of the highlights of the festival by the international press two years running (2015 and 2016).
In recent years, the Norwegian National Youth Orchestra has performed with conductors and soloists including Juanjo Mena, Vasily Petrenko, Christian Vásquez, Andrew Manze, Eliahu Inbal, Leif Ove Andsnes, Truls Mørk, Solveig Kringlebotn, Håkan Hardenberger, Barbara Hendricks, Henning Kraggerud, Håvard Gimse, Arve Tellefsen, Elisabeth Nordberg -Schulz and Ole Edvard Antonsen.