Konserthuset Stockholm

The long-awaited return of one of Sweden’s most international artists in a concert featuring jazz and pop

“The delight of the 2019 concert in Grünewald Hall is still palpable. Soon after that concert, we went through a key change as we entered isolation, cancelled live shows, and had the sudden sense that we were all in a waiting room. Now as the doors open again, my anticipation for the upcoming concert at Grünewald Hall feels like a child awaiting Christmas Eve.”

These are the words of Sylvia Vrethammar, one of Sweden’s most international artists with countless successful tours and guest performances in Scandinavia, Germany, England, Brasil, China and the US behind her.

Backing her at this concert are a traditional jazz quartet and a woodwind quintet. The musicians come from jazz and classical music scenes, and we recognise these songs as typical for Sylvia – with one exception! Brazil has made space for more jazz and pop. Naturally, composers include Vinicius de Moraes and Antonio Carlos Jobim alongside Cole Porter, Lennon/McCartney, George Gershwin and Stevie Wonder. Alexander Gietz and Sylvia herself contribute the composition Back in Town, which is also the title of the concert.

“A friend inspired the music with the phrase, ‘When you’re back in town, give me a call,’” says Sylvia. “Then this simple, swinging composition fell into place and I love to quote the line, ‘Stars shine from heaven when spring is here!’ With my new album, More Champagne, we’re going to celebrate this together.”

The English composer Dorothy Howell (1898–1982) garnered enormous attention in 1919 with the symphonic poem Lamia. The music is inspired by the John Keats poem with the same title. Her orchestral skill earned her the nickname “the English Strauss” already in her lifetime. Despite having been celebrated in the past, she has been relatively forgotten today – but there may well be a renaissance ahead. The Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra first performed this piece in February 2021 under the baton of Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla.

Of Prokofiev’s five piano concertos, the third is his most performed and beloved. Since its world premiere in Chicago in 1921, when the composer himself performed the solo, it has remained a modern classic. This music is filled with energy, as well as elegance and melodic beauty. Roland Pöntinen, one of Sweden’s absolute foremost pianists, takes on the masterful solo part in this concerto.

Last, we hear Carl Nielsen’s Symphony No. 4 – music with which Danish Thomas Dausgaard is very familiar, of course, but also a piece that the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra knows well after both touring and recording it with Sakari Oramo. Symphony No. 4 is subtitled “Det uudslukkelige” (“The Inextinguishable”). This dramatic music was composed in the middle of World War I, and is famous for its duel between two timpani players.

A vibrantly colourful gala

With passion and creativity, hundreds of teens transform Konserthuset Stockholm into a palace of art focused on the climate and the future. In spring, music and aesthetics students from Södra Latins Gymnasium created a vivid, inspiring show that offers unique performances by orchestras and ensembles with songs, hopeful dramatizations, projected creations and elegant dance performances. Already in the foyer, we encounter sculptures and dancers in costumes made from recycled materials, after which a show washes over us on the theme of environmental impact and our fight for a cleaner future.

Guest artists include former students from Södra Latin’s advanced music programme: Petra Marklund, Alexandra Büchel and Fredrik Zetterström

Any surplus will be donated to the fight for the climate.

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. In addition, extensive chamber music playing is a vital part of the course. This marks the final concert of this season’s academists. 

It begins with a world premiere, music for wind quintet by the young (born 1998) Finn Arttu Ahovaara. He currently lives in Sweden and has studied at the Gotland School of Music Composition. This is followed by yet another wind quintet: Samuel Barber wrote his Summer Music in the 1950s, a piece that is framed by bluesy colours and in between also gives room for individual solos. 

From wind instruments to strings. British-American Rebecca Clarke wrote Lullaby and Grotesque in 1930, and already from the title we understand there will be some contrasting music in this duo for violin and cello. Dvorák composed his string sextet in only two weeks in the spring of 1878. By that time his reputation as a composer was growing, and the partly folk dance inspired sextet was soon picked up around the world.