The Norwegian Eivind Ringstad, born in 1994, is one of the most important violists of his generation. He began playing the violin at the age of five. Nine years later he switched to the viola as his main instrument. He studied at the Barratt Due Music Institute in Oslo, Norway with Soon-Mi Chung.
Eivind Ringstad made his breakthrough by winning the Eurovision Young Musicians competition in 2012. Since then, he has performed at major festivals and concerts around the world. He also won numerous competition prizes in Norway, including the “Arve Tellefsen Music Award 2013” and the prestigious “Statoil (Equinor) Prize 2014”.
He made his debut with the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Eivind Aadland in 2013. This collaboration resulted in his debut CD released by Lawo Classics in 2017, featuring William Walton’s Viola Concerto and Christian Sinding’s “Suite in the Old Style” in an arrangement for viola and orchestra.
In 2016, Eivind Ringstad was awarded the “Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship”. At the same time he was invited to the prestigious talent program “BBC New Generation Artists 2016-2018”. As part of this program, he made his debut at the Wigmore Hall in 2017 with a recital, and at the Edinburgh Festival in 2018, with German pianist David Meier.
Eivind Ringstad has been invited to join the BBC orchestras in the UK on several occasions and has performed with numerous other orchestras including the Copenhagen Philharmonic Orchestra, Trondheim Symphony Orchestra, Kristiansand Symphony Orchestra, Dala Sinfoniettan, London Sinfonietta, Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, Norwegian Radio Orchestra, Norwegian Chamber Orchestra and Polish Chamber Orchestra. This season he makes his debut with the Lahti Symphony Orchestra and the Kuopio Symphony Orchestra in Finland.
Eivind Ringstad is a very active and passionate chamber musician and a fixture in Norway’s thriving chamber music scene. He has worked with some of the finest chamber musicians, including Leif Ove Andsnes, Janine Jansen, Anthony Marwood, Henning Kraggerud, Beatrice Rana and Steven Isserlis. This season, together with pianist Øyvind Sundsvalen and composer Martin Ødegaard, he was appointed artistic director of the Norsjø Chamber Music Festival, held in the Norwegian province of Telemark.
To complement the standard repertoire for viola, Eivind Ringstad also writes his own transcriptions to show the versatile possibilities of his instrument. His transcriptions include virtuoso compositions as well as well-known short pieces by Edvard Grieg, Eugène Ysaÿe, Edward Elgar and Ole Bull.
However, the young musician is also interested in contemporary music and has already commissioned several works. In 2018, the premiere of “Correspondances” for viola and piano, a work by the young Norwegian composer Peder Barratt-Due, took place as part of the renowned Edinburgh Festival.
Eivind Ringstad plays the viola “ex-Vieuxtemps” by G. Guadagnini from 1768, on loan from Dextra Musica.