Aksel Rykkvin

Aksel Rykkvin (b. 2003) is an award-winning Norwegian baritone based in London. He is studying for a BMus in voice under Prof. Mark Wildman at the Royal Academy of Music 2022-26, with a prestigious ABRSM scholarship. He received several accolades in 2023 and 2024, including third place in the Joan Chissell/Rex Stephens Schumann Lieder Prize, Second Prize and the Song Prize at the Kathleen Ferrier Society Bursary for Young Singers, and Most Promising Young Singer at the Somerset Song Prize. Aksel and duo partner pianist Zany Denyer were ‘Leeds Lieder Young Artists’ in 2024. At twelve, Aksel’s treble début album with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment received rave reviews. Both his solo albums reached the UK Classical chart top 10. He had an international career as the 'world's premier boy soprano' (Swedish Radio P2), and performed extensively as a treble soloist at concerts, operas, festivals, on radio and TV in Norway, Sweden, France, the Netherlands and the UK. As Yniold in Pelléas et Mélisande in Oslo he was hailed as ‘unsurpassable’ (ResMusica), and later he impressed at the Opéra Comique in Paris as Anthony in Miranda. Aksel has performed as a baritone soloist at festivals, concerts and operas in Norway, Sweden, UK, Austria and Germany. At Christian Gerhaher and Gerold Huber’s Lied festival in 2023, Neue Zürcher Zeitung praised his ‘voice as beautiful as blood and milk' and Deutschlandfunk radio commended his 'extremely clear diction'.