Tabita Berglund on conducting the music of Norwegian eccentric Gierr Tveitt with the BBC SSO

Gierr Tveitt may have been dubbed ‘the stubborn goat’ by his contemporaries, but conductor Tabita Berglund believes he may have created ‘the most beautiful piece ever written.’ Interview by Ken Walton

For Norwegian conductor Tabita Berglund, getting to work can be a bit of an expedition. “I live in a tiny place in the mountains,” she explains, “five hours north of Oslo, two hours south of Trondheim, where the temperature last week dipped to minus 30C. It’s one of the coldest places in Norway, but there’s a tiny airport here that is the secret to everything. I just take my kick sledge, strap my suitcases on, and I’m in the airport in ten minutes.”

Living in such snow-clad isolation certainly hasn’t stopped the 34-year-old fulfilling, since 2021, her first professional responsibilities as principal guest conductor of the Kristiansand Symphony Orchestra in southernmost Norway, nor hampered a burgeoning international career which has already seen her debut this year with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and direct the Orchestre de Lyon.

And fingers crossed it won’t deter Berglund getting to Scotland later this month, for her delayed debut with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. A previous attempt, in December 2022, had to be ditched. “That may have been one of those Covid casualties,” she recalls. So was a planned appearance last April with the RSNO, although she had already impressed them in 2020 as last-minute replacement for scheduled conductor Carlos Miguel Prieto.

Assuming her upcoming Glasgow and Perth SSO concerts go to plan she has a wholesome programme of Dvorak, Tchaikovsky and 20th century Norwegian eccentric Gierr Tveitt at her fingertips. “Tveitt was kind of bonkers,” she says. “In Norway they call him ‘stubborn goat’ which I guess describes his personality.”

Velkomne med Æra is a mere four minutes long and one of the few Tveitt folk-inspired works which survived a farm fire that destroyed most of his scores. “He had no copies, very little of his music was printed, so he lost almost everything,” Berglund explains. “Yet what we have here might be the most beautiful piece ever written.”

"Norwegian conductors have a responsibility to celebrate Norwegian music,” she believes. “If we don’t, who will?”

As for Dvorak’s Cello Concerto, this is a golden opportunity for Berglund to play mischief with her own musical past. Prior to graduating in 2019 from Norway’s national conducting programme, Dirigentløftet, she had been a successful cellist. One of her cello teachers was Truls Mørk, who just happens to be the soloist on this occasion.

Tabita Berglund PIC: Nikolaj Lund

“It’s the first time Truls and I have worked together in this way,” she says. “We were supposed to a year ago with the Philharmonia, but we both had to cancel so it never happened. I actually learnt this piece as a player with him. It’ll be interesting to see if he’ll accept what I want to do with it, as opposed to what he once wanted me to do with it. We’ll figure that out.”

The reason Berglund turned to conducting was, itself, something she hadn’t initially figured out. “I was quite happy as a performer, but after finishing my cello masters I felt something was missing, so applied for this crash course at the [Norwegian] Academy, among other things to better my score reading. The audition was the first time I had ever actually conducted, but – boom – somehow I just knew how to do this.”

The Dirigentløftet course – established in 2018, inspired by the German Dirigentforum, and borrowing wisely from the groundbreaking Finnish system spearheaded by Jorma Panula – provided Berglund with the perfect opportunity to turn her instinctive desire into a professional reality. “You do very little analysis, very little theory; you just learn by doing it.”

Which is also what her post in Kristiansand has provided. “The boost you get from an orchestra that believes in you, that says ‘we want to build a relationship with you’, that’s a trust I will be eternally grateful for. It’s like they’re telling me to just experiment, develop, do what you want. That’s been extremely important.”

With Berglund’s three-year Kristiansand contract ending this year, and her international profile on the increase, what next? “I’ve exciting news coming up, but I’m not allowed to say until later this month”. Whatever and wherever it is, her kick sledge awaits.

Tabita Berglund makes her debut with the BBC SSO at the City Halls, Glasgow, 22 February and at Perth Concert Hall, 23 February, see www.bbc.co.uk/bbcsso