For enthusiastic music-lovers the starting shot for the Aarhus Festival Week must be these classical concerts where the Danish National Opera, in collaboration with the Aarhus Symphony Orchestra and the newspaper Jyllands-Posten, presents a trio of top-class international soloists in the Symphonic Hall in the Concert Hall Aarhus. The world-famous tenor Joseph Calleja swept audiences off their feet at the festival week concert in NRGI Arena 2006, and he is now back along with the Swedish soprano Klara Ek – a fantastic singing partnership that will captivate the public. The trumpeter Sergei Nakariakov is on his first visit to Århus, where he is supplying world-class trumpet playing. The conductor is Giordano Bellincampi, and the musical director of the Aarhus Symphony Orchestra Palle Kjeldgaard hosts the concert.

The concerts are hosted by the musical director of the Aarhus Symphony Orchestra Palle Kjeldgaard, while the conductor and opera director Giordano Bellincampi is responsible for the musical coordination of the soloists, the Chorus of the Danish National Opera and the Aarhus Symphony Orchestra.

At the age of just 19 Joseph Calleja made his debut on the island of his birth, Malta, in 1997 as Macduff in Verdi’s Macbeth. Since then he has made his name as one of the most promising figures of his generation and has been featured on many of the greatest opera stages of Europe and North America, including Deutsche Oper, Covent Garden, the Vienna State Opera and most recently the Metropolitan Opera’s 125th Anniversary Concert in March 2009. In the course of his career Joseph Calleja has sung more then 20 different roles with special distinction as the Duke of Mantua in Rigoletto, Alfredo in La Traviata and Rodolfo in La Bohème.

The Swedish soprano Klara Ek made her debut in 2003 as Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro at the Royal Danish Theatre – it was a resounding success. Since then audiences have been able to experience her talent in roles such as Pamina in The Magic Flute, Proserpina in Orfeo, Despina in Così fan tutte and Echo in Ariadne auf Naxos. Klara Ek is a much sought-after concert soloist and has sung with orchestras all over the world, including the Minnesota Orchestra, RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, Dublin and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. In 2007 she made her debut at the legendary Wigmore Hall i London with arias by Haydn. In the coming season Klara Ek can be heard as Ilia in Idomeneo, Re di Creta at the Danish National Opera and in the spring of 2010 in concerts with the Berlin Philharmonic.

The prizewinning Russian trumpeter Sergei Nakariakov has broken through the musical sound barrier innumerable times with the bright, beautiful sound of his instrument since he impressed press and reviewers as a 13-year-old at the Finnish Korsholm Festival. Sergei Nakariakov has developed his own musical voice in his interpretations of popular works for trumpet and orchestra, and it is also to his credit that the flügelhorn with its slightly darker, soft sound has found its way to the concert stages as a solo instrument.

Giordano Bellincampi regularly conducts Danish and leading European, American and Asian orchestras. Most recently he could be heard in Århus as a conductor at the Festival Week Classic concerts in 2008, in Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman and Verdi’s Rigoletto at the Danish National Opera, in the opening concert in the new Symphonic Room of the Aarhus Concert Hall and the gala concerts with Bryn Terfel and Iréne Theorin (‘08) and Angela Gheorghiu (‘07).