Konserthuset Stockholm

A highly varied concert with a great deal of unusual music: newer works to begin with, and slightly older twentieth-century Hungarian and Norwegian music after intermission. Augusta Read Thomas (born 1964 in New York) was inspired by a poem about courage by the thirteenth-century Persian poet Jalal al-din Rumi. Rumi Settings for violin and viola can therefore be seen as a song without words. Anna Clyne (born 1980 in London) composed the playful Hopscotch for flute with inspiration from folk melodies and classic children’s games.   

Endre Szervánsky (1911–1977) was a composer and teacher (including of Hungarian-Swedish Ákos Rózmann). He is overshadowed, but was also inspired by, his fellow countrymen Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály. Like them, he used folk music in his compositions. We hear the trio from 1951.

Norwegian composer Bjarne Brustad (1895–1978) was both a top violinist and viola player, and he composed a number of orchestra pieces – among which we find nine symphonies. Here, a duo from 1931 is performed: Capricci is written for violin and viola, the instruments he of course knew first hand.

Frank Peter Zimmermann is widely acclaimed for his beautifully resonant violin-playing and he is considered one of the foremost violin soloists of our time. He has taken the stage at Konserthuset Stockholm many times before and is a very popular guest. Now we hear him in Stravinsky’s neoclassical and playfully melodic Violin Concerto, in which each movement begins with a sharp chord as if to say: Listen up – it’s starting now!

With the French composer Florent Schmitt we arrive at the early 1900s and La belle époque. Schmitt is not widely known anymore, but used to be mentioned alongside Ravel and Debussy. And he for instance inspired Stravinsky at this time. La Tragédie de Salomé is a true gem among forgotten masterpieces, with its fascinating orchestral colours and exciting rhythms.

The opening piece is Finnish Sebastian Hilli’s striking Miracle, and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra will be led by its chief conductor designate, award-winning American Ryan Bancroft. “A dancing conductor bodes well for the musicians,” wrote newspaper SvD after the 2021 Nobel Prize Concert.

Through Konserthuset’s popular organ matinée subscription, audiences get to hear Sweden’s leading organists play the building’s organ – one of the largest in Europe, with 6.100 pipes.

Alma Faxén first heard the organ at just two years of age, and at the age of six, she finally had her first organ lesson at Mellansel Folk High School. Alma now studies at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm with professor Johannes Landgren. Her previous teachers include Ulf Norberg and Gunnar Idenstam.

Alma’s first major appearance as a soloist was at the age of ten, in the presence of the Archbishop, Queen Silvia and Crown Princess Victoria. She has already won many distinctions, including a scholarship for excellent grades, growth and fellowship from Roslagens Sparbank Foundation, and the youth scholarship from the Royal Swedish Academy of Music.

At today’s organ matinée, Alma Faxén will perform music by one Swedish and two German organ masters: Gunnar Idenstam, Max Reger and J.S. Bach. And it is the master improvisor Idenstam (born in 1961), and previous teacher of Alma Faxén, who frames the programme with three arrangements and a concluding toccata.

Frank Peter Zimmermann is widely acclaimed for his beautifully resonant violin-playing and he is considered one of the foremost violin soloists of our time. He has taken the stage at Konserthuset Stockholm many times before and is a very popular guest. Now we hear him in Stravinsky’s neoclassical and playfully melodic Violin Concerto, in which each movement begins with a sharp chord as if to say: Listen up – it’s starting now!

With the French composer Florent Schmitt we arrive at the early 1900s and La belle époque. Schmitt is not widely known anymore, but used to be mentioned alongside Ravel and Debussy. And he for instance inspired Stravinsky at this time. La Tragédie de Salomé is a true gem among forgotten masterpieces, with its fascinating orchestral colours and exciting rhythms.

The opening piece is Finnish Sebastian Hilli’s striking Miracle, and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra will be led by its chief conductor designate, award-winning American Ryan Bancroft. “A dancing conductor bodes well for the musicians,” wrote newspaper SvD after the 2021 Nobel Prize Concert.