Programme

As part of the celebration of 100 years of Ingmar Bergman, the Royal Swedish Academy of Music offers an evening of cinematic soundtracks. It is no exaggeration to say that Swedish film comprises a trove of musical treasures. From Jules Sylvain and Kai Gullmar via classical composers like Lars-Erik Larsson and Dag Wirén to more modern composers like Benny Andersson, Matti Bye, and Ludwig Göransson – the composer behind this year’s Hollywood blockbuster, Black Panther.

Are newly composed film scores really necessary when older classical music is available? Does no one dare to use Bach and Schumann since the days of Bergman? Wikipedia’s list of 79 film score composers includes only one woman. Why is that the case? Join us on a dizzying journey through Swedish film history, viewed through the lens of music.

In partnership with the Royal Swedish Academy of Music

The young conductor and pianist Lahav Shani, who is not yet thirty, has already performed with some of the world’s leading orchestras, including the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, with which he first guest-performed in 2016. Now it has also been established that he will succeed the legendary Zubin Mehta as chief conductor of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, a position he will assume in 2020.

Because he is also a masterful pianist, he often combines conducting with performing as a soloist himself, in this case in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20. It is one of Mozart’s most performed and beloved concertos, composed in his much-discussed demonic key, D minor.

We will also see Lahav Shani lead the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra in an overture by Louise Farrenc, a prominent name from the French music scene of the nineteenth century. She wrote around fifty works, around 40 of which were published and performed all over Europe. In conclusion, we will hear Joseph Haydn’s masterful final symphony, number 104, music which was a success when it first premiered at the King’s Theatre in London in spring 1795. For well over two hundred years, it has retained its lustre and attractiveness among concert audiences.

Konserthuset Play!
Austrian star conductor Manfred Honeck conducts the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra in the first of fellow countryman Joseph Haydn’s twelve renowned London symphonies – perfect and classical music, in every sense. Listen

In Konserthuset’s popular organ matinée subscription, audiences get to hear Sweden’s leading organists play the building’s own organ – one of the largest instruments in Europe! 

The guest soloist at this organ matinée is Mattias Wager, who has been Stockholm Cathedral’s organist since 2011; he is also an internationally active concert organist. Mattias studied, among others, with Torvald Torén, Mats Åberg and Anders Bondeman, and graduated from the Royal College of Music in Stockholm in 1992. Mattias is also active as a composer and has composed music for theatrical performances about Luther and Bridget of Sweden, as well as for Stockholm City Theatre’s critically acclaimed performance of Strindberg’s Master Olof.

Mattias will present a programme ranging from Ravel’s well-known and captivating Bolero to an organ version of the equally familiar Air from Johann Sebastian Bach’s third orchestral suite.

He will also play music by American composer Florence Beatrice Price, by Christina Blomkvist and Adagio and Allegro by Mozart – originally composed formechanical organ. Mozart is said to have detested the sound of the mechanical organ, but he still took on the commission for this piece in 1790, the year before he died.

The young conductor and pianist Lahav Shani, who is not yet thirty, has already performed with some of the world’s leading orchestras, including the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, with which he first guest-performed in 2016. Now it has also been established that he will succeed the legendary Zubin Mehta as chief conductor of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, a position he will assume in 2020.

Because he is also a masterful pianist, he often combines conducting with performing as a soloist himself, in this case in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20. It is one of Mozart’s most performed and beloved concertos, composed in his much-discussed demonic key, D minor.

We will also see Lahav Shani lead the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra in an overture by Louise Farrenc, a prominent name from the French music scene of the nineteenth century. She wrote around fifty works, around 40 of which were published and performed all over Europe. In conclusion, we will hear Joseph Haydn’s masterful final symphony, number 104, music which was a success when it first premiered at the King’s Theatre in London in spring 1795. For well over two hundred years, it has retained its lustre and attractiveness among concert audiences.

Konserthuset Play!
Austrian star conductor Manfred Honeck conducts the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra in the first of fellow countryman Joseph Haydn’s twelve renowned London symphonies – perfect and classical music, in every sense. Listen

Composer Britta Byström has described the trombone as an instrument that resembles the human voice, a feature she has seized upon in her trombone quartet Tinta – a piece that explores the entire colour spectrum of the four instruments. It was composed in conjunction with her period as the “spring composer” at Berwaldhallen in 2014. The title, Tinta, means colour and comes from Giuseppe Verdi; he used it to describe the difference between the atmospheres in his various operas.

Christian Lindberg composed his piece Fafner Fanfare for Four Frogs for trombone quartet in 1999, as one of his first student pieces while studying composition under Jan Sandström. It was initially a two-part invention which Lindberg then developed into a four-part movement.

If Byström seized upon tonal quality and Lindberg upon polyphony, then in his trombone quartet, Henri Tomasi asks: “To be or not to be?” The programme also includes a piece by Eugène Bozza, one of the twentieth century’s most prolific composers of chamber music for wind instruments. His trombone quartets are both technically demanding and highly popular. 

The Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra’s trombone section will present the music at this soup concert.

Menu: Artichoke soup with fennel, served topped with bacon

The Stockholm Concert Hall at Hötorget is one of Sweden’s great architectural masterpieces. Created during a period of expansion in Stockholm, by the Swedish architect Ivar Tengbom, it opened in 1926. The Stockholm Concert Hall was built for the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and has since the start been the dedicated venue for the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony as well as many other prestigious events.

The tour is in Swedish.

The Stockholm Concert Hall at Hötorget is one of Sweden’s great architectural masterpieces. Created during a period of expansion in Stockholm, by the Swedish architect Ivar Tengbom, it opened in 1926. The Stockholm Concert Hall was built for the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and has since the start been the dedicated venue for the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony as well as many other prestigious events.

The tour is in Swedish.

Béla Bartók was both fascinated and influenced by his era. And his interest in folk music consistently gave him new impulses. But his music is always extremely Bartók-esque. The six string quartets span three decades and offer a panoramic view of his artistry. In the fifth quartet, he had also found a new approach with influences from older music, including Bach as a significant source of inspiration. The slow movements also feature the characteristic elements of “night music”. Ghostly dissonance and melancholy melodies are heard against a background of tones that occasionally resemble the sounds of nature.

Valborg Aulin was a prominent figure in Stockholm’s music scene in the late nineteenth century. With inspiration from France, she created a long line of superb songs and piano pieces. But her absolute best works are still the two string quartets.  Here, we will hear the young Swedish and highly acclaimed Treitler Quartet perform Aulin’s gracefully elegant and expressive Quartet in F-major.

Henri Dutilleux’s Ainsi la nuit is one of the most central works for string quartet of the twentieth century.  His subtly evocative melodic fragments call to mind a sense of night that piques the imagination, not at all unlike what we occasionally hear from Bartók.

The Stockholm Youth Symphony Orchestra (Stockholms Ungdomsorkester, SUSO) is one of Sweden’s leading symphony orchestras for young people. The orchestra is now celebrating its 40-year anniversary with a major concert in Konserthuset and music by Beethoven, Rossini, Leonard Bernstein and more. We will also enjoy a specially commissioned anniversary piece by Viktor Åslund – Speak, Memory!

Glenn Mossop is chief conductor and orchestra director. Also participating in this concert will be Helene Stureborg and Wille Sundling, who was one of the founders of the orchestra and served as artistic director until autumn 2004. In addition, we will hear Stockholms Musikgymnasiums Kammarkör (“Stockholm Music Upper Secondary School Chamber Choir”), clarinettist Emil Jonason, and Cecilia Zilliacus and Erik Wahlgren as the soloists in Brahms’ Double Concerto for Violin and Cello. 

SUSO plays an important role in both Kulturskolan Stockholm and in the city’s music scene. The orchestra performs regular concerts at Musikaliska and other venues around Stockholm County. Over the years, the orchestra has also gone on numerous tours, including to Egypt, China, Italy and most recently to Germany.

Many of the orchestra members are enrolled in various music programmes and intend to pursue careers as musicians, which has become a reality for numerous former SUSO musicians. Don’t miss this concert with our foremost young musicians.

In association with SUSO

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This year’s Composer Festival is dedicated to Thea Musgrave, one of the most prominent and respected composers of the United Kingdom. In 2018 she turns 90 years old; she is still highly active and will attend the festival. With her picturesque and dramatic music, she has a rare ability to take hold and draw the listener in to her multifaceted world.

Thea Musgrave often turns to visual art to find inspiration for her music. Or to history: many of her operas revolve around historical personalities, such as The Voice of Ariadne; Mary, Queen of Scots; Harriet, the Woman called Moses; Simón Bolívar and Pontalba.

Thea Musgrave was born in 1928 in Edinburgh, Scotland, where she studied at the university before moving to Paris. There, she spent four years studying at the conservatory under Nadia Boulanger. After her studies, she was active in London for a period before she became a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1970. Two years later, she moved permanently to the US, where she still lives.

Scotland’s Loch Ness is famous for its rarely seen sea monster. In this good-natured piece, the monster (tuba) rises up from the depths in search of the sun. After being warmed by the sun’s rays (trumpet) and an old Scottish melody, the sea monster returns to the depths of the sea with a mighty splash. A cool moon rises in the sky and a light breeze ruffles the water’s surface; all is calm.

Upon seeing one of sixteenth-century artist Piero di Cosimo’s frightening hunting paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Musgrave had the idea that different pictures relating to seasons could be a metaphor for the stages of human life. She has given shape to this idea in The Seasons.

Night Windows is a painting by American artist Edward Hopper. Of the first version of Night Windows from 2007 for piano and oboe, Musgrave says: “Walking down the dark street, it is hard to resist looking in through the illuminated windows and seeing glimpses of other people’s lives. It sparks the imagination …”

Thea Musgrave found inspiration for Turbulent Landscapes from the English artist William Turner. These six movements, despite their shared inspirational material, are also very different. Each movement is based on a specific painting, except for the second, which is based on three paintings. In addition, someone from the orchestra is featured as a soloist in each movement.