Concert with the RSPO Orchestra Academy

A Mahler Finale with the RSPO Orchestra Academy

Since 2016, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra has hosted an ”Orchestra Academy”. The international RSPO Orchestra Academy is a one-year, advanced academic programme for young musicians. Under the guidance of the section leaders from the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and the Piteå School of Music, the musicians receive intensive training individually, in chamber music, and orchestral playing.They also showcase their talents through a series of public chamber music concerts – such as this one featuring this year’s academy musicians. This finale is more than just a traditional chamber concert – we hear Mahler’s Fourth Symphony in a version for a smaller ensemble, led by the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra’s Chief Conductor, Ryan Bancroft!Symphony No. 4 is both simple and sophisticated; it is like dewdrops on a flower, suddenly shimmering with thousands of colours as the sunlight touches them – as Mahler himself described the melodies of the first movement. The symphony has been called “heavenly blue.” The first three movements lead to a final movement with a soprano solo: Wir geniessen die himmlischen Freuden – We revel in the heavenly joys. It is open, bright, lyrical, yet also playful, with themes and sonorities from the earlier movements reappearing.The soloist is the Swedish soprano Karin Mobacke, who in recent years has been gaining increasing attention on the country’s opera and concert stages. She made her debut with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra in 2023 in a concert performance of Johann Gottlieb Naumann’s national opera Gustaf Wasa.

Kulturnatt Stockholm – Dream and Nightmare with RSPO Orchestra Academy

***Please noteBags larger than A4 (approx. 30x20 cm) may not be brought into Konserthuset during Kulturnatt Stockholm.

Season opening with the Orchestra Academy

Since 2016, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra has hosted an ”Orchestra Academy”. The international RSPO Orchestra Academy is a one-year, advanced academic programme for young musicians. Under the guidance of the section leaders from the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and the Piteå School of Music, the musicians receive intensive training individually, in chamber music, and orchestral playing. They also showcase their talents through a series of public chamber music concerts – such as this one featuring this year’s academy students.The Polish composer Grażyna Bacewicz was 23 years old when she wrote her Wind Quintet in 1932, the same year she graduated in composition and violin from the Warsaw Conservatory. The music from this period is in a neoclassical style, and the quintet is a fine example of this.Elizabeth Maconchy was a composer of great versatility and unfailing integrity, amply deserving of a British critic’s description of her as one of the most substantial composers these islands have yet produced. She studied at the Royal College of Music with Vaughan Williams, but she was attracted less by English pastoralism than by the central European modernism of Bartók and Janáček. The prize-winning quintet featured here is an early work, composed in 1932 when she was 25 years old. The Czech-born Antoine Reicha was a contemporary and friend of Beethoven and was primarily active in Paris, where he became a professor at the Conservatoire (with students including Hector Berlioz). Reicha is particularly known for his writings on music theory, but his chamber music is also regularly performed. Here, we hear the Octet in a finale that brings together all the musicians.

Chamber Concert of the Orchestra Academy

Outside subscription

Chamber Concert of the Orchestra Academy

On this afternoon, when the new scholarship holders of our Joseph Keilberth Orchestra Academy perform chamber music together with musicians from our orchestra, it shows best how we make the young orchestral talents of tomorrow fit for the job: Listening to one another in a small ensemble is essential for the large community of the symphony orchestra. And what better way to learn than in concert? We can look forward to a colourful programme with masterpieces of chamber music literature. A surprise concert, as it were, because many scholarship holders have just been called into our orchestra, so that an exact programme can only be announced a few weeks before the concert. Looking forward to a »carte blanche« that will certainly not disappoint.

Chamber Concert of the Orchestra Academy