There is something mysterious about concert halls. All concert halls, not only the Victorian ones: dark corridors, silent signs, thick doors, and the bright and alluring stage. The mystique is even more noticeable when the orchestra appears. Musicians in black and white, concentrated and grave looking. After a minute or two the first violin player (concert master) stands up. A tone is given somewhere in the ensemble - and everyone follows in tuning. Then a new silence: everyone stands up - the conductor arrives on the stage.... 

• The largest orchestra in Norway, Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, contains 109 musicians, performing as a large group, struggling and searching for a homogeneous sound day after day, concert after concert. Starting every week with a new conductor, sometimes one the orchestra already knows even maybe the chief conductor, other times a stranger. Sometimes the teamwork pays off - in magic moments of melding together into one. But the large group is most of all 109 individuals, or even 110 including the conductor, trained towards perfection, maybe with a solo career in mind. Most of them are still in training for individual perfection, often by silent competition with the neighbouring musician at their side.

• The history of this particular orchestra goes back to the eighteenth century, under other names and forms than the orchestra we know today, formally established in 1919 as Filharmonisk Selskap. Famous composers and conductors such as Edvard Grieg, Johan Halvorsen, and Carl Nielsen were all part of the orchestral music scene in Oslo in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, developing the orchestra. In more modern times, Mariss Jansons, the chief conductor for the 20-year period to 2000, is recognized by many as the most important individual in stretching the orchestra's quality and quantity of repertoire. He has also been important in stretching the management opportunity set.