Principal Guest Conductor Malmö Opera
Patrik Ringborg is one of Scandinavia’s most prolific conductors, having conducted over 90 operas and a vast concert repertoire.
He is known for his controlled yet passionate interpretations of music that reaches far beyond his central work, which focuses on canonical composers such as Wagner and Strauss.
Ringborg was based in Germany for 30 years, holding numerous positions, including Chief Conductor in Freiburg and General Music Director at the State Theatre in Kassel, where, over his decade-long tenure, he conducted 27 new opera productions.
In his native Sweden, he has worked with all major orchestras and opera companies, holding positions of Principal Guest Conductor at the Gothenburg Opera and, since 2022, at the Malmö Opera.
His extensive list of opera work includes productions at the Staatsoper Dresden, the Volksoper in Vienna, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Cologne Opera, the Deutsches Nationaltheater in Weimar, and the Bregenzer Festspiele.
Noted collaborations include stage directors such as Christof Loy, Keith Warner, Peter Konwitschny, Ingmar Bergman, August Everding, Götz Friedrich, and Dietrich Hilsdorf, as well as singers such as Nina Stemme, Placido Domingo, Peter Mattei, Neil Shicoff and Dame Kiri Te Kanawa (including her farewell performances of Der Rosenkavalier).
Alongside opera work, Ringborg has conducted orchestras such as the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden, the Wiener Symphoniker, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, the Hong Kong Philharmonic, the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, the WDR Symphony Orchestra, the Gürzenich Orchestra, the Munich Radio Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland as well as the RTÈ Concert Orchestra.
Patrik Ringborg is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music and a recipient of honours such as the Opera Prize of Svenska Dagbladet, the Royal Gold Medal Litteris et Artibus, and the Hugo Alfvén Gold Medal.
This biography is for information only and should not be reproduced.
Lohengrin
Malmö Opera (October 2025)
"Patrik Ringborg begins with a beautiful and delicately brittle overture. He builds a powerful yet dynamic interpretation of an opera that contains just as many shades of light and darkness as he and the opera orchestra offer. It's breathtaking."
Skånska Dagbladet
“It also gave the impression that Patrik Ringborg was working very deliberately down in the pit, thinking of the balance here. He seemed acutely aware of every choice he made: wild tempo changes, some passages played very softly to make a crescendo hit even bigger, others faster than I’ve heard before – clear musical direction.
From an interpretive standpoint, it was fascinating to both hear and watch. At times, I found myself just staring at the screen behind me showing Ringborg in action. … It was clear, though, where he wanted to take the music. He even followed the text closely, occasionally miming along.” - Blogfløjten
Blogfløjten
“the one who seems to bend time and make just over four hours feel like a breath is conductor Patrik Ringborg, with an orchestra in top form and a choir that rushes forward like a raging river. "Lohengrin" in Malmö is simply a triumph of the collective”
Dagens Nyheter
“Conductor Patrik Ringborg conjures up the shimmering strings of the prelude as if from a dream and then holds everything together from the king's clattering trumpet arsenal to Elsa's sun-glittering woodwind sounds. The Malmö Opera Orchestra shines in its sonorous and dynamic breadth, and the choir excels”
Svenska Dagbladet
Autumn Sonata, Hong Kong Philharmonic and Finish National Opera
Hong Kong, October 2019
“the star of the show was Fagerlund's score, a churning kaleidoscope of sonorities veering back and forth between chilling transparency and gut-wrenching outbursts. The autumn of the title is surely a metaphor, but under the conductor Patrik Ringborg the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra wielded such an extensive palette of musical colour you could practically hear the leaves change.”
Ken Smith, Opera Magazine
Suor Angelica, Malmö Opera
April 2022
“The low brass in Patrick Ringborg’s orchestra seemed to drip tears”
Andrew Mellor, Opera Magazine
Hugo Alfvén: Complete Orchestral Songs
Naxos Sweden: Released September 2025
“Many of the orchestrations are reasonably simple and do not demand a lot from the orchestra. The dramatic ones are more challenging, but at whatever level of complexity they’re all performed very well under Ringborg’s direction. I am very glad this recording came my way. It opened me up to a composer I had heretofore disregarded. I took increasing delight in this album the more I listened to it.”
- Robert A. Moore, American Record Guide
Salome
Malmö Opera, February 2025
"Patrik Ringborg conducted well: he was good on colour and excellent on stage balance"
Andrew Mellor, Opera Magazine
Der Freischütz, Bregenzer Festspiele
Bregenz, July 2025
Musically, this ”Freischütz” scores compared to last year in yet another respect: Patrik Ringborg’s debut in Bregenz and at the helm of the once again brilliant Wiener Symphoniker is remarkable. The former Freiburg Principal Conductor and later interim Music Director is an expert in the grand Romantic musical arcs and shines with his incredibly exciting conducting. - Alexander Dick, Braunschweiger Zeitung
Under the sensitive direction of Patrik Ringborg, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra elicits a colourful expressiveness from Weber's score, which oscillates between dramatic power and chamber music precision. The integration of noise and sound levels into the orchestral structure is particularly noteworthy. - Andreas Marte, Vorarlberger Nachrichten
“Bregenz Festival has engaged outstanding singers, confidently supported by the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, conducted for the first time by the Swede Patrik Ringborg. Anyone who wants to experience dramatic and poetic musical theatre will certainly get their money's worth.” - Klaus-Peter Mayr, Ausburger Allgemeiner
“the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, broadcast from the Festspielhaus, sounds warm and romantic...with maestro Patrik Ringborg inspiring a pre-Wagnerian blend of sounds.” - Peter Krause, Concerti
"the Vienna Symphony Orchestra under Patrik Ringborg, mixed up to create a huge sound, plays excellently" - Jürgen Kan, Alb Bote Münsingen
"Is there a danger that the music is being pushed into the background by the Las Vegas-like show effects? Yes. But that doesn't happen in the current Bregenz "Freischütz," thanks primarily to the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and Patrik Ringborg. The top Viennese orchestra plays with impressive precision, soulfulness, and dedication...And the Swedish conductor delves even deeper in his interpretation than Enrique Mazzola did last year, unearthing moods in the early Romantic work that are magically captivating in their diversity and intensity." – Stefan Ender, Der Standard
National Symphony Orchestra, Ireland
Dublin, November 2024
Authoritative and masterful, Ringborg swept us along on the emotional journey that is Tchaikovsky’s Symphony no. 5 in E minor. The opening was dark and meditative, its melancholic mood contrasting with the more playful, almost mischievous second theme. Ringborg’s careful attention to the dynamics drew a rich, expressive performance from the NSO, allowing the brass and strings to shimmer and then roar with intensity. The second movement contains the glorious horn solo which was beautifully shaped before the cellos reiterated it with deep expressiveness. Ringborg whipped up the full forces of the orchestra to unleash the sonic boom of the ffff which Tchaikovsky notates in the score. Mercurial and graceful, the third movement was charmingly done while Ringborg and the NSO delivered a thrilling finale with incandescent tremolos, blazing brass and scurrying strings.
BachTrack
Malmö SymfoniOrkester
Malmö, December 2022
Conductor Patrik Ringborg makes the Malmö Symphony Orchestra an enthusiastic instrument at Malmö Live, and casts a spell on the myth of the doom of nature with Alfvén's grand orchestral palette and cunning leitmotifs: chromatically winding like Richard Strauss, glittering dancer like Bizet, and blackened like Weill and Sibelius.
DN.se
Romeo et Juliette, Malmö Opera
Malmö, November 2022
Conductor Patrik Ringborg captures these key moments, where Gounod’s maddeningly adept counterpoint gives way to Wagnerian soaring harmonies, and leads the Malmö Opera Orchestra through delicate, chamber-musically meandering passages. “Peace? Never!” says the rumbling, sweeping chorus that rounds out Act Three as Roméo is sentenced to exile after stabbing Tybalt to death in a knife duel in the Capulet’s backyard. The melodrama becomes a big theater and hits directly in the solar plexus.
newsbeezer.com
Orchestra redeems Gounod's fine score really well - all under the direction of Patrik Ringborg, who has just received a major Swedish prize for his musical merits and has been associated with Malmö Opera as 1st guest conductor.
operaensvenner.dk
Patrik Ringborg - orchestral repertoire
| http://www.ringb.org/en/konzert/ |
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Patrik Ringborg - opera repertoire
| http://www.ringb.org/en/opern/ |
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