Ragnar left Sweden to join the SF Symphony as Chorus director in March this year. And did we throw a welcome party for him? Did we ring his door with a cauliflower casserole and a bottle of wine to ease his arrival in the neighborhood? Nope. Nada. We must have been booked when he threw his housewarming or something, but so far, search for him here and you'll find only one single measly hit. Luckily for us, that one post heaps praise on Ragnar, otherwise we'd be accused of ignoring him.

It's never too late to break the ice, and we have an excellent opportunity: usually Ragnar's work happens in the background, and is acknowledged after each chorus performance, when he springs up on stage to receive a deserved round of applause alongside MTT or whomever conducted the orchestra. But this week, starting Wednesday in Cupertino, and Thursday at Davies, he'll be holding the baton himself, leading the orchestra in Handel's Messiah, aka the Holiday Treat. He answers our questions after the jump. Hallelujah!

Picture of Ragnar by Roy Manzanares; below Camilla Tilling, courtesy of SF Symphony

It’s Handel’s Messiah. Everyone knows, or at least, has heard, that beautiful oratorio. Can we sing along?

Ragnar: That would be fun and maybe that could happen some other year, but for these concerts we encourage the audience to just sing along silently in their heads, however not louder than that they can hear what the chorus and the orchestra have to offer.

It’s a tradition to play the Messiah at this time of the year. The orchestra can play this with their eyes closed. Are you really needed, or are you just the guy who opens the door of the garage to let the car out?

Ragnar: This is the age old question about whether the conductor is really needed for anything else than getting everybody to start and finish at the same time. Hopefully there will be more to it than that but the concerts will have to speak for themselves.

We saw the chorus recently in the Alexander Nevsky performance. They sounded wonderful! But our source tells us Kurt Masur encouraged them to sway, that it “wasn’t church music,” and it ended up looking like they were dancing and we compared them to Glide’s choir. So with you conducting: swaying, or no swaying?

Ragnar: I will certainly encourage inward swaying since a large part of Messiah really is quite groovy. About the outward swaying, however, I think we will have to be a bit careful.

Camilla Tilling is soloing in the Messiah. We really loved her in her last performance with the SF Opera as Susanna in the Marriage of Figaro. And she’s quite beautiful. Would you be upset if we illustrate this with a picture of her rather than yours?

Ragnar: Ms. Tilling made her SFS debut last January when she sang in Mozart’s Mass in C Minor under the baton of Ingo Metzmacher. We’re thrilled to have her back!

You’ll be conducting in another concert, Poulenc’s Figure Humaine in June. We love Eluard’s poems, we actually had to write down Liberté in our schoolboy notebooks growing up. What inspires you to conduct this piece?

Ragnar: Liberté is the climax of a deeply stirring set of poems by Eluard. It is about oppression, war and outer as well as inner freedom. Poulenc's marvelous setting of it is a musical challenge to any choir and the piece has become one of the great master pieces for choir a cappella.

How much of an input you have in the program anyway?

Ragnar: I have been involved in the programming process this season and also take part in discussions about the next.

We see in your bio that your 8yo kid is going to be a movie star in Sweden, in the film, Arn: The Knight Templar, supposedly Sweden’s biggest budget film ever, about a 13th century Swedish monk turned crusader. Congratulations! So you actually don’t live in SF?

Ragnar: I’m very much enjoying making San Francisco my new home. It’s an amazing city with lots to offer in the way of lifestyle and culture. I look forward to the day when the rest of my family is able to join me here. Also, as far as my youngest son Mikael is concerned, it is a bit closer to Hollywood!

Thank you so much!