Toke Lund Christiansen

Ole Schmidt is best known internationally as a conductor. He has appeared as a freelancer all over Scandinavia, in most of Europe, and in the USA but has also held a number of permanent appointments: after leaving the ballet in Copenhagen he conducted the Hamburg SO from 1969 to 1970, the Danish Radio Sinfonietta from 1971 to 1973, and the Århus SO (of which he was also artistic director) from 1978 to 1985. During this latter, creatively stimulating, period the new Århus concert hall was officially opened. Since 1984 Ole Schmidt has appeared as a guest conductor with numerous orchestras all over the world whose acquaintance he had made over the years, and an extra advantage of this freelance lifestyle has been the extra time available for composing. Today he is permanent guest conductor at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, a position he has held since 1986, and also principal guest conductor of the Toledo SO in Ohio, USA.

Ole Schmidt achieved world renown as a conductor in 1974, when he recorded the symphonies of Carl Nielsen with the London Symphony Orchestra in the wintry surroundings of St Giles Church in London. As the first complete set of the Nielsen symphonies this recording is a milestone in the reception of the Danish masters music, and it is still recognized as one of the best sets ever made from an artistic point of view. Schmidt's repertoire as a conductor is broad, but he has achieved particularly fine results with works by his own modernistic role models and by the Danish romantics.