Soup concert with delicate dreams

Lauriane Dahlkvist has been a member of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra’s violin section since 2016. Here, she will appear with Stefan Lindgren, the orchestra’s pianist since 2007 and a very active chamber musician. On the programme: four female composers.

Like many women composers of the nineteenth century, German composer Luise Adolpha Le Beau began her career as a pianist. She was extremely productive and composed a symphony, two operas and numerous chamber music pieces, including these wonderfully delicate “dreams” for viola and piano.

French Hélène Fleury-Roys Fantaisie is more outward-oriented. This uniquely beautiful music is darkly veiled and charged with a bold passion. Fleury-Roy studied at the famous conservatory in Paris, becoming the first woman composer permitted to take part in the Prix de Rome contest, in which she won third place in 1904. She later became a professor at the conservatory in Toulouse and taught music theory, composition and piano performance.

British Rebecca Clarke was one of the country’s first professional women orchestral musicians. She studied composition under Sir Charles Stanford who encouraged her to switch from violin to viola so that she could “be at the centre of the sound of the orchestra.” Her sonata for viola and piano sounds as grandiose as an orchestra, a playful and beautiful piece on the border between romanticism and impressionism. We will also hear music by Russian-American composer Lera Auerbach, who is famous for her neo-romantic musical language.