Programme

The concert is shown on Konserthuset Play

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Amanda Ginsburg is a new rising star among Swedish jazz singers and winner of a Swedish Grammy Award 2019 for the album Jag har funderat på en sak (”I've Been Thinking About Something”). “I let my sound bask in the musical language of Nordic melancholy. My goal is to carefully safeguard the legacy of some of the most beloved names in Swedish jazz and songs,” says Amanda Ginsburg who was nominated Newcomer of the Year by P2 Jazzkatten, Swedish Radio’s annual tribute to Swedish jazz. She was lauded in the press for her first full-length album.

In September 2020 she released her second album: I det lilla händer det mesta (“It is in the small that most things take place”). “I look at this second album as a continuation of my first. It is filled with stories of everyday life and the slightly banal events that make up a major part of my life, and yours as well. I find an infinite inspiration in everyday life”

Inspired by Swedish icons such as Monica Zetterlund and Jan Johansson, and with a few splashes of humour from Hasse and Tage, Amanda Ginsburg conveys with unerring musical jazz sensibility something both direct and deeply personal. She performed with Konserthuset’s Blue House Jazz Orchestra in the spring of 2019. She now returns with her own band. 

The Finnish ensemble performs newly composed Finnish music.

New Friday is the series for anyone who is curious and interested in exploring the new music of our era.

The ensemble Tampere Raw formed in 2001, when a few musicians from the Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra wanted to introduce their audience to contemporary music. At this guest performance at Konserthuset, they will present works by three female composers from Finland. Two of these pieces also interweave elements from a few more women from history.

Cecilia Damström’s piano quintet entitled Pictures from the Life of Minna Canth is the first in a trilogy on the theme of the woman’s fate. The piece depicts Finnish feminist Minna Canth, who was active in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Helsinki-born Damström’s vision is for her music to compel the listener to think and to feel.

When Minna Leinonen composes songs, she is inspired by everyday sounds and Finnish folk traditions. Her music has been performed by the BBC Philharmonic and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, among others. Tampere Raw will perform her piece Naisen Muotokuva from 2013, which portrays women’s lives through the centuries and contains melodies by medieval composer Hildegard von Bingen.

The ensemble will also perform Hele for 12 players by Lotta Wennäkoski, which was commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association.

Music by Tchaikovsky, Rebecca Clarke and more.

Supporting oneself as a composer has never been easy. For example, Tchaikovsky composed his first string quartet in 1871 for the purpose of bringing in a little extra money, because he could barely survive on his pay from the conservatory in Moscow. The piece is filled with melodies that inspire listeners to sing along, and the second movement, based on a folk song, is among his most beloved compositions.

Tchaikovsky’s quartet will be on the programme when the David Oistrakh String Quartet performs at Konserthuset Stockholm. The four members are all incredibly successful as soloists, and as an ensemble they have performed throughout their home country of Russia and in Europe, Asia and South America. Their 2020 calendar includes, among many other performances, concerts at Wigmore Hall in London, Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin and the Wiener Konzerthaus.

They will also play a dazzlingly energetic string quartet by Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, which he composed in 1838 and dedicated to the Swedish Crown Prince Oscar I. In addition, we will hear Poem for String Quartet from 1926 by English composer and alto violinist Rebecca Clarke, who was one of the first professional female orchestral musicians in England, as well as Bartók’s Romanian Folk Dances in an arrangement for string quartet.

Music by Bach, Fauré – and Larsson himself.

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.

After graduating with a degree in organ performance and improvisation, and furthering his studies in Paris, London, Amsterdam and the US, Nils Larsson has become established as one of the most prominent organists in Sweden. Since 1992, he has primarily been active as a church musician at Högalid Church in Stockholm, but he also teaches solo organ playing, liturgical organ playing and improvisation at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm. Larsson is a master of many styles and genres and is also a skilled improviser, especially in various forms of Baroque music.

Today’s organ matinée programme includes Larsson’s improvisation for organ solo Old-fashioned Prelude – a tribute to the old master Dieterich Buxtehude, Fantasie on A-N-I-A-R-A as well as a suite for organ solo on Our planet in Tarkovsky’s cinematic world, which is also by Nils Larsson.

In addition, we will hear music by Johann Sebastian Bach, Gabriella Gullin, Czech composer Petr Eben, who was also a skilled improviser, and a nocturne from Gabriel Fauré’s incidental music to the comedy Shylock, a play based on Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice.

The concert is shown on Konserthuset Play

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Katarina Karnéus appears frequently on the greatest opera and concert stages worldwide. Since 2012, she has worked with the Göteborg Opera, where she has performed numerous acclaimed roles, including Brangäne in Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde and Orpheus in Gluck’s Orpheus and Eurydice. She has performed at Konserthuset Stockholm several times before, most recently in Arnold Schoenberg’s Erwartung in the Double Drama programme staged in January 2019.

Now Karnéus returns with Edward Elgar’s Sea Pictures, a suite of five songs to texts associated with water, by five different writers. They takes of from a slumbering sea to the haven of Capri, continuing with an extatic morning sabbath at sea, down to the corals and finally joining a swimmer in stormy waters. 

Joseph Haydn composed his twelve last symphonies in England, the so-called London Symphonies. Among these, we find the Symphony No 103 from 1795. It has been nicknamed The Drumroll, and you can understand why ... 

The concert will begins with Victoria Borisova-Ollas’ Open Ground, a work inspired by Salman Rushdie’s novel The Ground Beneath Her Feet. How stable is the ground beneath our feet, really? Who would have ever dared to imagine what it feels like when it suddenly starts to rock? The Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra recently launched a new cd (BIS) with the orchestral music of Borisova-Ollas.

The concert is shown on Konserthuset Play

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American composer Philip Glass studied under the legendary Nadia Boulanger in Paris. During those years, he developed the minimalist style that became his defining characteristic and which has made him one of the most popular modern composers of our era.

In Paris, he collaborated with the theatre company Mabou Mines and composed music for many of their shows, including a staged rendition of Samuel Beckett’s novella Company. The four movements are closely connected, while also spanning a broad range of feelings, such as melancholy, insolence, a sense of something idyllic and eager anticipation. Beckett liked the music very much.

Like Philipp Glass, Jennifer Higdon lives in New York. In her Sky Quartet, she paints a musical vision of the “exquisite canvas of blue and clouds” she observed west of the Mississippi. Amazing Grace is her bold, lovely version of the familiar melody.

Menu: Cauliflower soup with almond crunch & chives (lactose and gluten-free)

The concert will be held on 23 May 2021 (opens in a new window)

Your current ticket is valid for the new date.

Please contact biljett@konserthuset.se regarding any ticket questions. For other questions, please contact press@livenation.se

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Anna Netrebko, the internationally renowned, Russian-born soprano has been declared a 2020 recipient of the prestigious Polar Music Prize. On 31 January, she will come to Stockholm for an exclusive concert at Konserthuset. She will be accompanied by pianist Pavel Nebolsin, and will perform a programme of music by Russian, French and German composers. Guest artists this evening are mezzo-soprano Elena Maximova and violinist Giovanni Andrea Zanon.

Anna Netrebko’s stage presence is infused with tremendous charisma. Many people consider her the reigning opera star of the 2000s, a soprano with “star quality” in the fullest sense of the expression.

She was born in Krasnodar, Russia, studied singing at the conservatory in St. Petersburg and made her stage debut at age 22. Since then, her interpretations of the most iconic opera heroines have made lasting impressions, as have her award-wining recordings.

Anna Netrebko regularly appears in leading roles on the world’s top opera stages and she is the first classical musician to have ever been included in Time Magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world.

She has received many prizes and distinctions, including the International Opera Award 2017 for Best Female Singer; Opera News Award 2016; Musical America’s 2008 Artist of the Year; Germany’s prestigious Bambi Award; and the UK’s Classical BRIT Award for Singer of the Year and Female Artist of the Year. Anna, who is also an Austrian citizen, received the prestigious “Kammersängerin” title in 2017.

Pianist Pavel Nebolsin was born to a musical family and studied music from a young age. He was the laureate of Young Soloists Festival (1995) and Classic Heritage International Competition (1998). He graduated from Gnessin State Academy of Music in 2008. Pavel Nebolsin has received Best Accompanist diplomas from the Russian Vocal Levko Competition, the International Festival Modern Art and Education, the International Antonin Dvorak Singing Competition and the Glinka International Vocal Contest. Since 2009 he has an ongoing collaboration with the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow.

More information: www.livenation.se (opens in a new window) www.annanetrebko.com (opens in a new window) and www.polarmusicprize.org (opens in a new window)

The concert is shown on Konserthuset Play

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String trio ZPR was founded by Cecilia Zilliacus, violin; Johanna Persson, viola; and Kati Raitinen, cello. Monday at Last is a concert subscription in which ZPR, now for the twelfth year in a row, invites guest musicians to explore new and old music together, often in close contact with the audience. This time Johanna Persson is replaced by Riikka Repo.

The main attraction of this concert is perhaps the first performance of a Kalevi Aho’s brand new piece for ackordeon and string trio, with the Finnish ackordeonist Janne Rättyä – one of the leading musicians on his instrument in the classical world. Rättyä’s presence is also the reason for the fact that many of the pieces in the programme are played in adaptations for his instrument.

We hear two works by the French composer Philippe Hersant, one of which is an hommage to his compatriot Henri Dutilleux (1916–2013), and the Dutilleux piece is in turn an hommage to Bach. The concert opens with music by Igor Stravinsky and Kaija Saariaho.

In cooperation with ZPR

The concert is shown on Konserthuset Play

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Elfrida Andrée, conductorc, composer and organist (in 1867 the first woman in Europe to become a cathedral organist) was influenced by the music of Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Schubert, and composed chamber music and many excellent symphonies. Here, Ulf Norberg, organist of Konserthuset Stockholm, has a leading role in the Organ Symphony No 2, written for organ and brass.

Stenhammar’s Serenade is one of the most refined and exquisite pieces ever composed by a Swedish composer. He wrote it while visiting Florence in 1907. In one of his letters, he says, “I want to write beautifully and tenderly about the south, in a way that only a resident of the north can do.” And indeed he succeeded, for the Serenade is a masterpiece: sensual southern European music presented in Nordic light – playful, lyrical and beautiful.

The Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra is led by Tobias Ringborgsom, who is not only an internationally acclaimed conductor, but also a violinist and an active advocate for Swedish music. He conducted one of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra’s live-streamed concerts from Konserthuset Stockholm on short notice in the spring. 

The Georgian-American pianist in his first recital at Konserthuset.

With both powerful and poetically expressive playing, Georgian-born Aleksandr Toradze is one of the most in-demand pianists on the international concert scene.

He is known for his personal interpretations of the great Romantic repertoire and is also something of a specialist in Russian music. The programme for his debut recital at Konserthuset Stockholm includes Prokofiev’s unparalleled Piano Sonata No. 7 – powerful, rhythmic, almost brutal music which Toradze has truly made his own.

He has performed with most of the world’s top orchestras and conductors, and just a few days before his recital he will appear with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra in Stravinsky’s Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments and Alfred Schnittke’s Concerto for Two Pianos.

Toradze studied at the conservatory in Moscow, where he has also taught. He has lived in the US since 1983 and in addition to his career as a soloist, he is also known as a prominent professor and educator at Indiana University South Bend.