Composer Weekend with Tobias Broström

Tobias Broström is known for his rhythmically powerful music, colourful orchestration and distinctive sense of harmonics. His richly associative, nearly cinematic narrative compositions are performed by orchestras all over the world. Now he is at the centre of Konserthuset Stockholm’s Composer Weekend 2023.

At this inaugural concert, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra will give the world premiere of a newly composed opening piece. We also hear the trumpet concerto Lucernaris, written for internationally renowned trumpet player Håkan Hardenberger, who is also the soloist.

The title Lucernaris refers to a Catholic lamp-lighting ceremony. Broström describes the piece as a journey from darkness to light, both on an overall poetic level – between darkness and light, cold and warmth – but also specifically musically, between soloist and orchestra. 

The first symphony had its world premiere in 2022 and was commissioned by the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra. This is its second performance. 

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Tobias Broström is known for his rhythmically powerful music, colourful orchestration and distinctive sense of harmonics. His richly associative, nearly cinematic narrative compositions are performed by orchestras all over the world. Now he is at the centre of Konserthuset Stockholm’s Composer Weekend 2023.

In Transit Underground, we encounter several of Tobias Broström’s characteristic musical traits – urban, outwardly oriented, rhythmically charged music and an imaginative use of all the orchestra’s possible sounds. When Tobias Broström was composer-in-residence with the Gävle Symphony Orchestra in 2006–2009, he met Karen Gomyo, who was in Gävle to play Bo Linde’s Violin Concerto. That culminated in a collaboration and this lyrical, masterful violin concerto.  

For a brief time in the early 1890s, Erik Satie was involved in the secret Rosicrucian Order, whose ideas came from Egypt in the time of the pharaohs, Renaissance alchemy and mysticism. The result was evocative music to Le fils des étoiles, the Son of the Stars, a drama by the French mystic Joseph-Aime Péladan. Broström has turned Satie’s music into a dazzling orchestral work.  

Tobias Broström is a trained percussionist, which meant it was also natural to compose a virtuosic, explosive percussion concerto – although not for himself, but for his peer Johan Bridger. Bridger won the 2004 Soloist Prize, with the statement: “For an intensely personal style, brilliant technical mastery and overpowering stage presence.”

Read more about Composer Weekend

Tobias Broström is known for his rhythmically powerful music, colourful orchestration and distinctive sense of harmonics. His richly associative, nearly cinematic narrative compositions are performed by orchestras all over the world. Now he is at the centre of Konserthuset Stockholm’s Composer Weekend 2023.

At this inaugural concert, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra will give the world premiere of a newly composed opening piece. We also hear the trumpet concerto Lucernaris, written for internationally renowned trumpet player Håkan Hardenberger, who is also the soloist.

The title Lucernaris refers to a Catholic lamp-lighting ceremony. Broström describes the piece as a journey from darkness to light, both on an overall poetic level – between darkness and light, cold and warmth – but also specifically musically, between soloist and orchestra. 

The first symphony had its world premiere in 2022 and was commissioned by the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra. This is its second performance. 

Read more about Composer Weekend

Tobias Broström is known for his rhythmically powerful music, colourful orchestration and distinctive sense of harmonics. His richly associative, nearly cinematic narrative compositions are performed by orchestras all over the world. Now he is at the centre of Konserthuset Stockholm’s Composer Weekend 2023.

Tobias Broström has a strong focus on chamber music. We hear David Huang in his Fantasia for piano and the Stenhammar Quartet in the occasionally dreamy and evocative String Quartet No. 1. Together, they tackle the world premiere of a newly composed piano quintet.

Johan Bridger was the soloist at the world premiere of the percussion concerto Arena, which was performed at Saturday’s festival concert. Here, he is the soloist in the striking, virtuosic and frequently performed solo version of this concerto.

Read more about Composer Weekend