Svava Bernharðsdóttir

A violist who began on the violin, with Gígja Jóhannsdóttir and Rut Ingólfsdóttir among her teachers, and took her final diploma in viola at Tónlistarskólinn í Reykjavík in 1982. She went on to study in Illinois with John Kendall, in the Netherlands with Nobuko Imai and in New York with William Lincer and Karen Tuttle, and took her doctorate at the Juilliard School in 1989, with a dissertation on the history of Icelandic violin and viola playing. At Juilliard she won the school's viola competition and played Hindemith's Der Schwanendreher with its orchestra. In Basel she then studied historical instruments at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. She was assistant principal viola of the Iceland Symphony in the 1993 to 1994 season and held the same post in the Slovenian Philharmonic from 1994 to 2006, playing Bartók's Viola Concerto with it. In Ljubljana she also led the violas of the Philharmonic's string chamber orchestra and of the new music group Osterc, and taught the viola at the Academy of Music as an associate professor. She has lived in Iceland since 2006, holds a post in the Iceland Symphony and teaches at the Iceland University of the Arts and the Kópavogur music school. She first played at the Skálholt summer concerts in 1983. With her daughter, the violinist Rannveig Marta Sarc, she plays as Dúó Freyja, which has commissioned and given first performances of works for violin and viola by Icelandic composers. Her playing can be heard on the records Svaviola and Svaviola II.