Konserthuset Stockholm

The Nobel Prize Concert is an annual event of the highest international standard. The concert is part of the official programme during Nobel Week and is a tribute to the year’s Nobel Prize recipients. In addition to the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, elite musicians and conductors also participate each year. 

This year’s Nobel Prize Concert will be online due to the current situation. The concert will, for the first time, be streamed globally through the Nobel Prize YouTube channel and on nobelprize.org. SVT Play will also live-stream the performance (in Sweden only). The concert can also be seen in SVT2 Kulturstudion on Saturday 12 December at 19.05.

The Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra is led by French Stéphane Denève, who works with the world’s foremost orchestras and who is also appreciated for his brilliant programming. He is chief conductor of the Brussels Philharmonic and music director of the American St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. He debuted with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra in 2002 and last appeared with the orchestra in 2017.

The soloist at this year’s Nobel Prize Concert is pianist Igor Levit, acclaimed for his unparalleled interpretations of Beethoven’s music. He is a regular guest at Konserthuset and his recitals of Beethoven’s piano sonatas this year garnered significant attention and were unanimously critically acclaimed.

At this year’s Nobel Prize Concert, we hear him perform Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5, known as the Emperor Concerto. The first movement is powerful and begins with masterful cadences; the second movement is introverted, with a nearly improvisational solo section, while the finale is an energetic, dancing, jubilant rondo which Beethoven charged with contrasts and enormous pathos. 

The concert is presented by Nobel Prize Outreach AB, in association with Konserthuset Stockholm (opens in a new windoww

Igor Levit is one of his generation’s most important pianists (he was born in 1987) and he regularly appears on all of the major concert stages worldwide. He has performed at Konserthuset Stockholm on several occasions, each time with Beethoven on the programme. When he returns for the major Beethoven anniversary, he will do so emphatically – in eight concerts, he will perform all 32 of Beethoven’s piano sonatas.

After the monumental Hammerklavier Sonata No. 29, Beethoven returns in Sonata No. 30 to a smaller format and brings out his melodic, poetic side. The concluding variation movement is rare with its enormous richness of expression, which draws out the heartfelt theme.

But Beethoven is never predictable, and the subsequent Sonata No. 31 is expressive, reflective, sometimes brutal, but also humorous and life-affirming: music that serves as an entire biography.

Like Pathétique, the mighty final sonata, Opus 111, begins with a heavy and majestic mood, before the passionate Allegro takes over, with its enormous development of power. It only has two movements, which surprised Schlesinger, who had commissioned it and who wondered if perhaps the score printer had forgotten a movement! Naturally, this was not the case. Instead, these are two movements with the greatest possible contrasting effects – a fierce and turbulent first movement and a sublime and monumental second movement, in which Beethoven was thought to not want to limit himself at all, as he explored brand new harmonic possibilities.

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Frank Peter Zimmermann is widely acclaimed for his virtuosity and beautifully resonant violin-playing. He is considered one of the leading violin soloists of our era and has performed at Konserthuset Stockholm many times before, both in chamber music concerts and with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra. During the LVB 250 anniversary year, when he tackles all ten of Beethoven’s violin sonatas, he will do so accompanied by multi-award-winning pianist Martin Helmchen,

Beethoven composed most of his sonatas for violin and piano within a span of five years around the turn of the century to the year 1800. Only the final one came somewhat later, in 1812. The three sonatas of Opus 30 in A major, G major and C minor are all individual masterpieces with entirely distinct characteristics. The Sonata in A Major is relaxed and warm; the Sonata in G Major is playful and humorous; while the Sonata in C Minor is fiery and passionate.

The piano was indeed Beethoven’s preferred instrument and now he had also fully mastered the violin and could put all of its technical potential to use. In the first movement of the elegant Sonata in E-flat Major, the instruments imitate one another in masterful runs and passages. The second movement is beautiful and emotional, and precedes the vivacious finale, in which the violin and piano revisit the reciprocal hunt from the first movement. The final sonata is atmospheric and pastoral, infused with pain, longing and incredible passion.

Since 2016, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra (RSPO) offers one year of training on site at Konserthuset Stockholm. The RSPO Orchestra Academy aims to give participating musicians heightened knowledge and understanding of the profession by giving them the possibility to work with – and alongside – one of Europe’s leading symphony orchestras.

The musicians receive individual tuition on their instrument by tutors that are predominantly leaders and principals of the orchestra. In addition, extensive chamber music playing is a vital part of the course, leading to public concerts as well – as in in this livestream from our beautiful Grünewald Hall. 

Some quite rare pieces are performed here, for instance music by the American composer Jessie Montgomery (born in 1981) and Swedish Arne Mellnäs (1933–2002). In addition to this, late romantic colouring in Korngold’s second string quartet and the Mozart quintet in E flat major, which Mozart himself considered one of his best pieces ever!