Bernhardur Wilkinson

Faroese conductor Bernharður Wilkinson began his musical studies at an early age as a chorister at Westminster Abbey in London. He entered the Royal Northern College of Music in 1969 where his principle study was the flute. In 1999 he was appointed assistant conductor of the Iceland Symphony Orchestra. He conducted the first performances of Atli Heimir Sveinsson’s First and Second Symphonies and also premièred the First Symphony by the Faeroese composer Sunleif Rasmussen, a work which later won the Nordic Music Prize. After conducting the Academy Orchestra of St Petersburg he was offered a subscription concert with the St Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra at the Festival of Friends. He has since then conducted the Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra in Bulgaria. In her review of the première of The Madman’s Garden by Sunleif Rasmussen, the first Faeroese opera, Hilary Finch wrote in The Times (18th October 2006) that ‘the mastermind of the evening was the conductor Bernharður Wilkinson, who held this complex music-drama together with precision and enthusiastic commitment’.