Ragnar Søderlind is a Norwegian

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

 composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

. He has written ballets and operas, and for the concert hall, programmatic works based on poems.

Biography

Ragnar studied with Conrad Baden

Conrad Baden

Conrad Baden was a Norwegian organist, composer, music educator, and music critic.-References:...

 in Oslo

Oslo

Oslo is a municipality, as well as the capital and most populous city in Norway. As a municipality , it was established on 1 January 1838. Founded around 1048 by King Harald III of Norway, the city was largely destroyed by fire in 1624. The city was moved under the reign of Denmark–Norway's King...

 and with Erik Bergman

Erik Bergman

Erik Valdemar Bergman was an influential composer of classical music from Finland.Bergman's style ranged widely, from Romanticism in his early works to modernism and primitivism, among other genres...

 and Joonas Kokkonen

Joonas Kokkonen

Joonas Kokkonen was a Finnish composer. He was one of the most internationally famous Finnish composers of the 20th century after Sibelius; his opera The Last Temptations has received over 500 performances worldwide, and is considered by many to be Finland's most distinguished national opera.-...

 at the Sibelius Academy

Sibelius Academy

The Sibelius Academy is a university-level music school which operates in Helsinki and Kuopio, Finland. It also has an adult education centre in Järvenpää and a training centre in Seinäjoki. The Academy is the only music university in Finland. It is among the biggest European music universities...

 in Helsinki

Helsinki

Helsinki is the capital and largest city in Finland. It is in the region of Uusimaa, located in southern Finland, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, an arm of the Baltic Sea. The population of the city of Helsinki is , making it by far the most populous municipality in Finland. Helsinki is...

. This was followed by studies in conducting at the Norwegian State Academy of Music where he is currently a faculty member.

As a composer, Søderlind initially composed orchestral works which were strongly influenced by late Romanticism and early 20th-century European music. His style has become more advanced over the years, yet throughout he has been a master of orchestration and has maintained his personal stamp on sound. In addition to orchestral music, his output includes incidental music for plays, ballets and operas. He has also arranged a considerable amount of music, including several works by Edvard Grieg

Edvard Grieg

Edvard Hagerup Grieg was a Norwegian composer and pianist. He is best known for his Piano Concerto in A minor, for his incidental music to Henrik Ibsen's play Peer Gynt , and for his collection of piano miniatures Lyric Pieces.-Biography:Edvard Hagerup Grieg was born in...

, and he has recently written an opera that includes Grieg’s music for Olav Tryggvason.

Discography

Søderlind's Violin Concerto has been recorded together with Johan Kvandal's on the Centaur label.

Sources

• Arvid O. Vollsnes. The New Grove Dictionary of Opera
  New Grove Dictionary of Opera
  The New Grove Dictionary of Opera is an encyclopedia of opera, considered to be one of the best general reference sources on the subject. It is the largest work on opera in English, and in its printed form, amounts to 5,448 pages in four volumes....
  
  , edited by Stanley Sadie (1992), ISBN 0-333-73432-7 and ISBN 1-56159-228-5