Pines of Rome

French Stéphane Dénève, who most recently led the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra at the 2020 Nobel Prize Concert, conducts the orchestra in an imaginative and evocative programme of music that inspires internal imagery. Arthur Honegger’s symphonic poem Pastorale d’été was composed while on holiday in the Swiss Alps in 1920. Einojuhani Rautavaara’s Cantus Arcticus from 1972 was inspired by the nature of northern Finland – and also incorporates pre-recorded birdsong.

German-born Clara-Jumi Kang debuted with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra in spring 2021 and returns for this performance. At the age of four, she was the youngest student ever to be admitted to the Mannheim University of Music and Performing Arts, and she began at the Juilliard School of Music in New York at the age of seven. Clara-Jumi Kang is the soloist in Karol Szymanowski’s lyrically beautiful and virtuosic Violin Concerto No. 1.

Ottorino Respighi’s beloved Pines of Rome concludes the journey. Respighi illustrates Rome in two other tone poems – its fountains and its festivals – but in the middle of these three pieces, the imagery portrays pine trees. But nature and the pines are also a starting point for images and memories of the city’s history. The four movements are performed without pause.