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The Swedish guitarist, Mats Bergström, grew up in a family of musicians in Stockholm. After graduating from the Royal College of Music in Stockholm in 1982, he had a further year of study in London and a debut concert in Wigmore Hall in 1983.
Mats Bergström primarily worked as a session musician during the 1980's, playing his trade with both the electric and acoustic guitar. While he experienced reasonable success afterward, even appearing on several recordings in the mid-1980s, he decided on further study. Two years of post-graduate studies at the Juilliard School in New York (1990-1992), were followed by a conscious orientation towards chamber music. Thereafter he occasionally appeared as soloist in concert, but largely focused on chamber music performance and song accompaniment. These days he can often be heard accompanying Sweden's foremost singers or as a cross-boundary soloist and ensemble musician,
Mats Bergström has taken guitar performance into so many directions and with such skill, it's a challenge to simply define his career. He is a highly successful soloist, chamber player, accompanist, and arranger, and in most of these roles he has struck out rather imaginative paths. In the chamber realm he has played in duos, trios, and larger ensembles, and in such unusual combinations as vocalist, double bass, and guitar. He has done much accompaniment, particularly with vocal soloists like sopranos Annika Skoglund, Jeanette Köhn, Barbara Hendricks and Kerstin Avemo; mezzo-sopranos Malena Ernman and Anne Sofie von Otter; baritones Mikael Samuelson and Olle Persson. As an arranger he has, through Mats Bergström Performance Editions, fashioned numerous renditions for guitar and other instruments of works by J.S. Bach. and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, George Frideric Handel, W.A. Mozart, Georges Bizet, Grieg, Nielsen, and many others. Naturally, his repertoire is inclusive of music by these, as well as by contemporary composers like Reich, Takemitsu, Åke Parmerud, and Anders Hillborg. And Bergström has also performed crossover fare by Duke Ellington, Jerome Kern, Michel Legrand, and others.
In the last few concert seasons, engagements with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Ensemble Modern, London Sinfonietta, Barcelona 216, Anne Sofie von Otter and Malena Ernman have taken Mats Bergström to the Wiener Musikverein, the Berliner Philharmonie, the Royal Festival Hall (London), Teatro Colón (Buenos Aires) Théâtre du Châtelet (Paris) and Dalhalla (Rättvik in Sweden). He remained busy making numerous arrangements of instrumental and vocal pieces from the classical repertoire.
Mats Bergström has recorded for such labels as BIS, Naxos, Caprice and Proprius. His 1995 Areco Music CD, "With a little help from my friends", was a crossover effort (works by Ravel, de Falla, Chick Corea, Gershwin, etc.) that was quite in the spirit of chamber collaboration, as it featured Christian Bergqvist (violin), Sam Bengtsson (electric bass guitar), Anna Norberg (flute), and many others on various tracks. By the turn of the new century he was a major international presence, with many successful recordings and a busy concert schedule. His concert appearances with mezzo Malena Ernman resulted in their first CD, "My Love", issued in 2004 on the BIS label. He recorded a disc of his arrangements of Schubert sonatas for the Proprius label in 2010 that featured Nils-Erik Sparf, on violin and viola, and other artists. During the 2011 BBC Proms, his performance of Steve Reich’s Electric Counterpoint was a major success at the Royal Albert Hall. The following year his recording of the same piece was released on CD and Blu-ray. His discography also includes Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin with Olle Persson (Caprice), Sånger utan ord with Georg Riedel (Naxos), "Tárrega: Guitar Music" (Naxos) and Dadodado (Mats Bergström Musik). He has also presented his interpretation of J.S. Bach’s collected works for the solo violin, Sei Solo, in Kulturhuset i Ytterjärna, Sweden (Naxos, 2017).
In 2006, Mats Bergström was made a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music; and in 2011 he received the royal Litteris et Artibus medal. |
