Music that Changed Me Sofi Jeannin

English Opera Group Orchestra et al/ Benjamin Britten Heritage HTGCD236 Stenhammar Sverige

Swedish Radio Choir/eric Ericson Available on Spotify and itunes JS Bach Christmas Oratorio

Monteverdi Choir, English Baroque Soloists/ John Eliot Gardiner DG Archiv 479 1759 Mahler Symphony No. 2

Concertgebouw Orchestra /Bernard Haitink Philips 420 2342 Poulenc Gloria

Kathleen Battle (soprano); Boston So/seiji Ozawa Deutsche Grammophon 427 3042

Born in Sweden, Sofi Jeannin studied conducting and singing in Nice, Stockholm and London. In 2008, she was appointed music director of the Maîtrise de Radio France, a post she still holds today, and since 2018, she has also been chief conductor of the BBC Singers. The BBC Singers will perform the shortlisted entries in the Radio 3 Carol Competition 2019 over the festive period.

Igrew up in Sweden, where singing is very important and every classroom had a piano. My sister used to come home from choir and teach me different voice parts, so we sang two-part harmony around the house and for our neighbours. When I was about eight, our children’s opera group put on BRITTEN’S The Little Sweep and the music made such a strong impression on me. It was a sad time at home because my parents were divorcing, and going to rehearsals and being in this wonderful music was like an oasis for us. Britten had the idea that even children and amateurs should be introduced to proper music with high ambition.

We moved with my mother to a small rural town, where I learnt the piano with a very good musician, a Hungarian refugee. I loved playing the piano but it was always the collective experience that attracted me, to sing and play with others. I sang in a pop band, and I found recordings and scores in the library. I discovered the Swedish Radio Choir under Eric Ericson. They sang so wonderfully in tune, their intonation was natural and the sound was so focused. I love their recording of STENHAMMAR’S Sverige, not only for the singing, which makes my Swedish heart beat, but the way it sums up some of the longing and melancholy we have up in the north.

Music is a big part of everyday life: we sing with the different seasons, and feasts and the regions all have their traditions. In my teens I put my own choir together and the choir teachers at school and at church let me organise projects such as the Santa Lucia procession in a hospital and in a women’s prison. With its beautiful songs, candles and the smell of cinnamon, this ceremony helps us get through the darkness of the winter months. Coming from a Lutheran family, I love Christmas – and JS BACH. His Christmas Oratorio is truly celebratory, and conductor John Eliot Gardiner’s performances capture that spirit with their pace and phrasing.

I didn’t conduct until I went to the conservatoire in Nice (my father is French but I had to learn French from scratch) and then on to Stockholm. I thought I would be a musicologist – I was interested in the Swedish tradition of kulning, the highpitched song women shepherds use to summon their herds. But I realised that it was conducting that attracted me the most. I enjoy being able to take the score, absorb it and communicate it to other people.

The strongest musical experience of my student days was when Bernard Haitink came to conduct MAHLER’S Second Symphony and I prepared the chorus at the Royal College of Music, where I did my Mmus degree. To see him in the rehearsal process, his exquisite technique and that distilled way where everything is essential… I was entranced when he was on the podium. I saw that his way of laying out a score comes from life experience; you have to grow into your own person.

I got work straight out of college and

I had to pretend I’d done all kinds of repertoire. My first stand-in job was to conduct POULENC’S Gloria. How lucky! I had been obsessed with it for years, and I could mask that I hadn’t conducted it before. That idea of Poulenc as ‘half monk, half scoundrel’ really comes across in that piece. I’ve done a lot of him with the BBC Singers since I officially started with them in 2018.

The singers in the Maîtrise (youth choir) of Radio France have introduced me to their heritage, while I’ve introduced them to Nordic and British music.

The two ensembles are different but complementary: with young people you can never get blasé and they give so much back. Equally, the BBC Singers are so enthusiastic about music that it’s almost relaxing to work with them.