Chamber concert: Violin Piano

Chamber Concert: Piano Quartet

There is intriguing soul food to be discovered in this chamber concert: The symphonist Mahler is hardly connected with small ensembles. However, he loved »Hausmusik« and wrote the inventive and passionate quartet movement in A minor in 1876 during his time as a student in Vienna, music that even back then »stirred up great sympathy«. Later, in 1973, the sketched opening of a scherzo surfaced, which Mahler had apparently intended to be the second movement – and Alfred Schnittke adopted these bars as the foundation for his exciting Piano Quartet from 1988: He developed a process with the aspiration to »remember something that never came to be«. But the endeavour to track Mahler's tonal language fails repeatedly and the composition finally culminates in the original quotation from the fragment: »It appears and pauses« – and so remains further unfinished. Brahms wrote his Piano Quartet op. 25 during a difficult phase of his life, full of self-doubt. It remains a speculation whether he thought of his beloved Clara Schumann with every bar – who played the piano part at the premiere in 1861 and was »terribly nervous« because the work »lay so heavily on her heart«. It captivates with its intense motivic relationships and features a Hungarian-flavoured rondo as a sweeping finale. The first string quartet by Josef Suk is likewise deeply emotional: it was composed in 1896 and a contemporary raved that it was »the best« he knew of Suk. The beguiling work does indeed also revel in Bohemian folklore, but the sometimes very introspective view and the fluctuating moods make it sound like a confessional psychogram – after all, Josef Suk saw himself as an artist who wanted to express with music »what the soul was full of«.

Chamber concert: Piano quintet

This programme is inspired by a world of romantic feelings: Brahms had been tinkering with the composition of a quintet since 1862 – at a time when he was continually fragile due to failures and said despondently: »When you go on 30 and feel weak like I do, you like to lock yourself up and look at the walls in your sadness«. Nevertheless, he became self-confident, exercised, learned Latin and felt, »I'm growing!« Moreover, the Hamburg-born composer moved to his adopted home of Vienna, where he lived near the Prater and could drink his wine »where Beethoven used to drink it«. In 1864, he finally finished the piano quintet, about which his soulmate Clara Schumann raved: »I feel after the work as if I had read a great tragic story.« The remarkable composition captivates with a plethora of original thoughts that are artfully developed – it is also filled with a profound seriousness in long parts. Elgar‘s moving piano quintet also bears witness to a similar state of mind: it was composed in 1918/19 at a time when his life was overshadowed by worries, illnesses, fears and the loss of loved ones in the wake of the horrors of war. Despite his great fame in London, the highly sensitive composer retreated to the countryside to find a break from the world's noise – to which he soon had nothing more to say in music: he wrote only a few works, such as the piano quintet. Even though it sounds at times belligerently agitated, a gloomy mood and a sheer overwhelming nostalgia spreads again and again as a witness to his broken soul – after all, he noted at the time: »Everything comforting and hopeful in my life is irretrievably over«.

Chamber concert: Strings Horn Piano

Chamber concerts are very popular with our orchestra musicians, allowing them to showcase new flavours and put individual instruments in the spotlight. Now, there is a wonderful rendezvous with the horn – about which the »Ideen zu einer Ästhetik der Tonkunst« (»Ideas on the Aesthetics of Music«) as early as 1784 stated that it was »humanly conceived as a sensitive soul for almost all societies«. Many composers were inspired by the instrument with its snail shape and distinctive sound to create music – including Mozart, whose horn pieces were all written for the virtuoso Joseph Leutgeb. He first played in the Salzburg court orchestra, but soon moved back to his hometown of Vienna. Due to his somewhat simple-minded character, however, he was often the target of Mozart’s witty remarks, who sometimes notated the pieces he wrote for him in different colours or added mocking remarks to the score. One result of this humorous friendship was the horn quintet from 1782, a work with lots of inventive humour and thematic imagination. The second composition was written by Brahms, who once disparaged the horn as a »brass viola« – yet he probably only meant this tongue-in-cheek, as it was his favourite instrument, especially in his youth. This may be why he wrote the poignant horn trio in 1865 as a mourning piece, shortly after his mother's death. It is characterised by a romantic sense of nature and hunting scenes, but also by mournful lamentations. His close friend Clara Schumann raved about the »extremely interesting work« with its opening movement, which is »very rich in engaging melodies«, its »beautiful« Adagio and its finale, which »is full of life«.

Soup with violin and piano

Sonata for violin and piano is one of Debussy's most beloved and performed chamber music works. It was his final completed piece and was created during a difficult time: he was suffering from terminal cancer, and the First World War was still ongoing. A sort of farewell, then, but the music is also imaginative and joyful. Debussy wrote to a friend that the music is "an example of what can be accomplished by a sick man in wartime."At this all-French soup concert, we also hear music by Pauline Viardot-Garcia, born in 1821 in Paris. She had a brilliant career as a mezzo-soprano with successes at the Paris Opera and tours across Europe. Additionally, she was a composer and wrote operas and songs, including the warmly melodic 6 morceaux, written for her son Paul.French-born violinist Gabriel Cornet joined the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra in 2016. In this program, he is accompanied by compatriot pianist Tom Grimaud. They have performed soup concerts together on several previous occasions.***Menu: Jerusalem artichoke soup with roasted pumpkin seeds. The soup is served with sourdough bread, crispbread, butter, mineral water/light beer, coffee/tea, and a piece of chocolate. Wine and beer available for purchase for those who wish.All soups are lactose- and gluten-free. Please inform us of any special dietary requests when booking.

Soup with violin and piano

Wilhelm Peterson-Berger is one of our foremost national romantic composers, beloved by many for his three collections of Frösö Flowers for piano, among others. The bright atmosphere and melodies that make us dream of nature and the Swedish summer are also found in the suite Opus 15 for violin and piano.British-American Rebecca Clarke (1886–1979) was a highly skilled violist and violinist and a pioneer among female composers. In the impressionistically coloured Midsummer Moon, she entices with the full range of the violin and the orchestral breadth of the piano, depicting the moonlit midsummer evening.In between, American John Novacek's wonderfully humorous, insanely virtuosic, and outrageously entertaining Four Rags, ragtime music in four parts. Rena Kimura, a member of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra since 2017, is accompanied by pianist Per Olsson.***Menu: Mushroom soup with curly parsley. The soup is served with sourdough bread, crispbread, butter, mineral water/light beer, coffee/tea, and a piece of chocolate. Wine and beer available for purchase for those who wish.All soups are lactose- and gluten-free. Please inform us of any special dietary requirements when booking.

Soup with violin and piano

Wilhelm Peterson-Berger is one of our foremost national romantic composers, beloved by many for his three collections of Frösö Flowers for piano, among others. The bright atmosphere and melodies that make us dream of nature and the Swedish summer are also found in the suite Opus 15 for violin and piano.British-American Rebecca Clarke (1886–1979) was a highly skilled violist and violinist and a pioneer among female composers. In the impressionistically coloured Midsummer Moon, she entices with the full range of the violin and the orchestral breadth of the piano, depicting the moonlit midsummer evening.In between, American John Novacek's wonderfully humorous, insanely virtuosic, and outrageously entertaining Four Rags, ragtime music in four parts. Rena Kimura, a member of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra since 2017, is accompanied by pianist Per Olsson.***Menu: Potato leek soup with chive oil. The soup is served with sourdough bread, crispbread, butter, mineral water/light beer, coffee/tea, and a piece of chocolate. Wine and beer available for purchase for those who wish.All soups are lactose and gluten-free. Please inform us of any special dietary requests when booking.

Piano Chamber Music

Chamber concert: Cello, Clarinet and Piano

In 1774, the encyclopaedia »Allgemeine Theorie der Schönen Künste« (General Theory of the Fine Arts) stated that only someone could compose trios »who combined all parts of art with a fruitful and lively imagination, and exercised himself to feel every trait of a character or passion musically and to articulate it in tones«. Our concert brings together three trios by composers who truly had what it takes. Although Brahms actually told his publisher in 1890 that it was »certainly time to go«, his creative energy came back and he composed the clarinet trio op. 114 a year later. Turned in on themselves and almost withdrawn, the instruments engage in a quiet dialogue here, loosened only by the two middle movements. A friend of Brahms said: »It is as if the instruments loved one another.« Clarinet, cello and piano are also musical soulmates in Beethoven‘s trio: According to one critic, they made »quite a good ensemble« in 1799. This popular Opus 11 was named the »Gassenhauer-Trio« (popular song trio) because the fiery opening movement and the heartfelt Adagio are followed by an entertaining finale for which Beethoven adopted a popular catchy tune – from Joseph Weigl‘s opera »L‘amor marinaro« (»The Corsair of Love«). However, the fact that too great feelings can also cause suffering is dealt with in Glinka‘s trio, which he prefaced in 1832 with the motto: »I have only experienced love through the pain it causes!« The emotional work seems like an expression of mental anguish set to music: Although the composer was living a carefree life in Italy at the time, the trio reveals the darker side – unhappy love affairs as well as physical ailments, so much so that one musician called out in dismay after the premiere: »What despair!«

Chamber Concert

Composed in 1785, Mozart’s K 478 was his first contribution to the piano quartet genre. The emotionality of the opening movement’s minore key and the subtly wrought dialogue between strings and piano proclaim its high artistic standards. No less brilliant is the Piano Quartet composed 100 years later by the young Richard Strauss. In his youthful élan he vacillates between engagement with romantic models (especially Brahms) and harbingers of his own style. The ennoblement of the clarinet as a chamber music instrument takes us back to Mozart. To the present day, many works owe their existence to the challenge of blending its timbre with the strings. The same is true of Veress’s Trio of 1972 and Penderecki’s Quartet of 1993, whose elegiac finale also pays tribute to Schubert’s C major Quintet.