Season opening 2020
Season Opening with The Firebird: Dreams, dances and roller-coasters.
About the video
- From a livestream 17 September 2020.
- The video is approximately one hour.
- Subtitles in English and Swedish is activated by using the CC control in the video player.
The Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra opens its regular concert season under the baton of Andrew Manze.
Katarina Leyman’s Roller Coaster: Super 8 is inspired by Beethoven’s eighth symphony and childhood experiences on the roller coaster at Gothenburg’s Liseberg amusement park. But this music is not merely a simple illustration of a roller coaster; rather, as Katarina Leyman herself says, “It captures the exhilaration and perhaps the worry one may feel on a ride like that, an adventure at an amusement park or in life …”.
Another adventure for the listener is represented by Britten’s Les Illuminations for soprano (or tenor) and strings. The music set to Rimbaud’s sensual poems is both dreamy and dramatic. Les Illuminations soon became one of Britten’s most appreciated works. The celebrated Swedish soprano soloist Hanna Husáhr has in recent time interpreted for instance Sophie in Massenet’s Werther at the Bergen opera in Norway and Pat Nixon in John Adam’s Nixon in China at the Royal Swedish Opera.
Dance is the starting point of Stravinsky’s dazzlingly colourful The Firebird – the first of the three great ballets he composed for the impressario Diaghilev and his Russian Ballet. It is based on the russian tale about Prince Ivan, who enters an enchanted garden. There’s a magnificent apple tree and every night it gets visited by the flamboyant Firebird who eats from the golden apples that bring eternal youth, beauty and happiness.
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The music
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Katarina Leyman Roller Coaster: Super 8
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Benjamin Britten Les Illuminations
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Igor Stravinsky The Firebird Suite (1919)
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Participants
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Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra
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Andrew Manze conductor
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Hanna Husáhr soprano
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H. R. H. Crown Princess Victoria speaker
