Webb stream: Lucerne Symphony Orchestra

Subscribers of Torsdag Stor will get a refund of the amount that relates to this concert. Instructions are sent via e-mail. You can also find information on your customer account.

Information about tickets and refunds

***

The venerable Lucerne Symphony Orchestra, founded in 1806, would this evening have made its first guest performance at Konserthuset Stockholm. The concert was planned as part of the celebration of 100 years of diplomatic contacts between Switzerland and Sweden.

The celebration has had to find another form due to the corona pandemic. When the concert program was played last week at the orchestra's season opening in Lucerne, it was therefore recorded. The program has a strong Swedish touch through Lisa Larsson's performance of Franz Berwald's songs, in an orchestration for soprano and orchestra by Rolf Martinsson.

The concert film contains several greetings and speeches: we hear the soprano Lisa Larsson, the Swiss ambassador to Sweden Christian Schoenenberger, Executive and Artistic Director of Konserthuset Stockholm Stefan Forsberg, Intendant Numa Bischof-Ullman and Prof. Michel Mayor, Swiss Nobel laureate in physics 2019.

Fanfare for the Common Man by American composer Aaron Copland, was written during World War II, in 1942. The piece was in part inspired by a speech made by Vice President Henry A. Wallace, in which he proclaimed the dawning of the ”Century of the Common Man”. Out of the 18 fanfares that were commisioned from American composers to open each concert at this time, only the fanfare by Copland has reached a more prominent place in the repertoire.

We will also hear internationally acclaimed Swedish soprano Lisa Larsson as the soloist in Berwald’s Traumreise song cycle, a dreamy journey through Europe arranged for orchestra by Rolf Martinsson.

Infused with melancholy anxiety, Brahms’ fourth symphony – which is also his last – is much darker than the preceding symphony. The fact that Brahms’ symphonic role model was Beethoven is well known and is also evident in the fourth symphony. But this does not mean imitation. The last movement is a unique and intimately coloured passacaglia, in which a recurring line of melody in the bass section forms the foundation for the dramatic, passionate finale.