Biography
Chief Conductor: NDR Radiophilharmonie
Highlights of the 2010/11 season included concerts with the Berlin Philharmoniker, Wiener Symphoniker, NDR Sinfonieorchester, Orchestre National de France, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and WDR Sinfonieorchester. Guest conducting highlights this season include debuts with Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Danish National Symphony Orchestra, his Japanese debut at the Pacific Music Festival, Sapporo and return engagements with Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Müncher Philharmoniker, WDR Sinfonieorchester and Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra.
2011/12 opera highlights include a new production of La bohème for Den Norske Opera. Eivind returns to Opernhaus Zurich for a production of Rusalka in 2012/13 and will also make his debut with Bayerische Staatsoper in the same season.
In summer 2011 Eivind was awarded the Arve Telefsen prize in recognition of his contribution to Norwegian music.
Reviews
"The conductor of this highly celebrated evening in the Philharmonie was the Norwegian whizzkid Eivind Gullberg Jensen... who possesses great sensitivity and temperament, he encouraged the orchestra to play on brilliant form and allowed the pieces to show their true character." (Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, May 2011)
"Eivind Gullberg Jensen projects his own musicality in this uninhibited, subjective interpretation. This is no ordinary performance, but a truly romantic interpretation of the piece with a beat that resonates in the listener's consciousness. Even the melancholic waltz movement had an unexpected optimism about it." (Svenska Dagbladet, February 2011)
"Gullberg Jensen found great moments in Sibelius' Second Symphony…The brass exposed Bruckner-like radiance, and the rich, golden string sound ennobled the searching beginning and unfolded with fascinating force in the gigantic final climax."
(Klassikinfo.de, August 2010)
“Alden’s direction finds fruition in Eivind Gullberg Jensen’s ideally buoyant, rhythmically alert, liberated conducting, which has the orchestra scurrying off in nervous flurries of sound and tracing Janàcek’s spasmic ostinatos and pent-up climaxes with lyrical finesse: a sensational house debut for the young Norwegian.” (The Financial Times, March 2009)
“Amanda Roocroft, repeating her previous success as Jenufa, steadily shrivels from a sunny, lighthearted girl to an emotional wreck. As she shudders with grief, on being told of the death of her baby, the tenderness of the score captured by the sympathetic conductor Eivind Gullberg Jensen is heartbreaking.” (Evening Standard, March 2009)
“Eivind Gullberg Jensen conducts with admirable restraint and inexorable momentum. Strong stuff, finely done.” (The Guardian, March 2009)
“Musically, Eivind Gullberg Jensen's ENO debut was a total triumph. The orchestra sounded wonderful, possibly the best I've ever heard them. There was an inevitability to the tempos that made everything flow naturally, and Jensen made the difficult job of balancing solo voices against Janáček's dense orchestrations seem a piece of cake. Never once were singers overwhelmed.” (Intermezzo, March 2009)
“Musically the performance was outstanding. Arguably the most striking musical achievement of the evening was the orchestra, and the way Eivind Gullberg Jensen moulded every phrase. I can hardly remember when I have heard the ENO orchestra sounding so good, both lush, incisive and sensitive to a multitude of nuances. These were wonderfully managed under the ever alert Jensen, who proved himself a worthy member of the line of great Janacek conductors at ENO begun by Charles Mackerrras.” (www.onlinereviewlondon.com, March 2009)







