Chamber Concert with the RSPO Orchestra Academy – The Finale

Since 2016, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra (RSPO) offers one year of training on site at Konserthuset Stockholm. The RSPO Orchestra Academy aims to give participating musicians heightened knowledge and understanding of the profession by giving them the possibility to work with – and alongside – one of Europe’s leading symphony orchestras. In addition, extensive chamber music playing is a vital part of the course. This marks the final concert of this season’s academists. 

It begins with a world premiere, music for wind quintet by the young (born 1998) Finn Arttu Ahovaara. He currently lives in Sweden and has studied at the Gotland School of Music Composition. This is followed by yet another wind quintet: Samuel Barber wrote his Summer Music in the 1950s, a piece that is framed by bluesy colours and in between also gives room for individual solos. 

From wind instruments to strings. British-American Rebecca Clarke wrote Lullaby and Grotesque in 1930, and already from the title we understand there will be some contrasting music in this duo for violin and cello. Dvorák composed his string sextet in only two weeks in the spring of 1878. By that time his reputation as a composer was growing, and the partly folk dance inspired sextet was soon picked up around the world.