A world-renowned orchestra

The young pianist Alexandre Kantorow is acclaimed for his glowing, intense and poetic depth of performance. In 2019, at the age of 22, he became the first French pianist ever to win the prestigious Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow.

Since then, Kantorow has toured with Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra, and given recitals at Concertgebouw, Carnegie Hall and more. He was supposed to have debuted at Konserthuset Stockholm last spring, but was prevented from doing so by the pandemic. Now we will finally get to hear him with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, led by Simone Young, in Franz Liszt’s poetically narrative and vibrantly masterful piano concerto.

Conductor Simone Young grew up and studied in Australia, but has a world-leading German and Austrian repertoire. In 2005 she became the first woman to conduct the Vienna Philharmonic and she spent many years as artistic director of the Hamburg State Opera and chief music director of the Hamburg Philharmonic.

Austrian Anton Bruckner is one of her favourite composers, and here, she and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra take on Symphony No. 6, which Bruckner described as his “most daring”. This music is filled with elevated beauty, rhythmic multitudes and melodic splendour. With a run-time of approximately 55 minutes, it is also his shortest.

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Livestream
This concert can be seen at Konserthuset Play. You can also see the concert afterwards on Play.

Håkan Hardenberger, conductor and perhaps the world’s foremost trumpet player of the classical scene, has had a close collaboration with Konserthuset Stockholm for decades. He has appeared at Konserthuset nearly 60 times as a soloist, or as soloist and conductor. He is now turning 60 years old and is celebrating with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra with works such as Haydn’s well-known and beloved trumpet concerto. The concert will begin with Haydn’s Chaos, the large-scale, dramatic introduction to the oratorio The Creation.

Through his numerous commissions and world premieres, Håkan Hardenberger is an innovator of the trumpet repertoire. Many of the most famous composers in the world have written pieces specifically for him, such as the atmospheric master Toru Takemitsu (1931–1996), who was often inspired by his surroundings. In addition to pure musical impulses from jazz, pop, and avant-garde style, he was also inspired by nature and stories.

His piece Paths is dedicated to Håkan Hardenberger, but it also pays tribute to composer Witold Lutoslawski. Hardenberger has therefore chosen to conclude the concert with Lutoslawski’s Concerto for Orchestra, a modern twentieth-century classic that brings out the virtuosic potential of the symphony orchestra.

Håkan Hardenberger, conductor and perhaps the world’s foremost trumpet player of the classical scene, has had a close collaboration with Konserthuset Stockholm for decades. He has appeared at Konserthuset nearly 60 times as a soloist, or as soloist and conductor. He is now turning 60 years old and is celebrating with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra with works such as Haydn’s well-known and beloved trumpet concerto. The concert will begin with Haydn’s Chaos, the large-scale, dramatic introduction to the oratorio The Creation.

Through his numerous commissions and world premieres, Håkan Hardenberger is an innovator of the trumpet repertoire. Many of the most famous composers in the world have written pieces specifically for him, such as the atmospheric master Toru Takemitsu (1931–1996), who was often inspired by his surroundings. In addition to pure musical impulses from jazz, pop, and avant-garde style, he was also inspired by nature and stories.

His piece Paths is dedicated to Håkan Hardenberger, but it also pays tribute to composer Witold Lutoslawski. Hardenberger has therefore chosen to conclude the concert with Lutoslawski’s Concerto for Orchestra, a modern twentieth-century classic that brings out the virtuosic potential of the symphony orchestra.

This week, Emanuel Ax will perform with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, in addition to a solo recital on Sunday. He is one of the world’s foremost pianists and regularly appears with the most prominent orchestras and conductors in the US, Europe and Asia. He is known for his uniquely vast repertoire and breadth of expression. In addition to well-known classical concertos, he also plays new music, for example during his 2017 visit to Konserthuset Stockholm for the annual Composer Festival when he performed the solo in HK Gruber’s Piano Concerto.

This time, we will hear him in Mozart’s elegant yet vivacious Piano Concerto No. 17. One familiar anecdote is that Mozart had a tame starling that he taught to sing the theme from the final movement, which grows in the concerto into a grandiose variation movement, in which the final variation resembles a euphoric opera finale.   

The conductor will be Franz Welser-Möst, recipient of the Eric Ericson Honorary Chair in 2018 from the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, and since 2020, he has led the orchestra for two weeks each season. This collaboration is based upon the spirit of community that developed between the orchestra and conductor during their first performances together, and which has deepened over the years.

We will get to enjoy the fruits of that collaboration in Schubert’s exceptional Symphony in C Major. The first movement begins with a solo for horn – an instrument which has come to symbolise the Romantic era, and which sets the tone for the rustic nature of the region surrounding Vienna that was the source of Schubert’s strength and inspiration. He never had the opportunity to hear the symphony performed for an audience. By the time Robert Schumann discovered the piece and brought it into the light of day, Schubert had been dead for ten years.