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Harding & Veronika Eberle

Schumann’s Violin Concerto, the only one he wrote, languished in obscurity for decades with a sullied reputation and it took almost 100 years after Schumann’s death until it was premièred. Today however, it is rightly considered one of Schumann’s most critical works and is the mainstay of many a soloist’s repertoire, among them Veronika Eberle who has performed it numerous times herself and has a heartfelt relationship to the piece. Anton Bruckner himself informally called his Symphony No. 5 the “Fantastic”. Others have called it the “Tragic”, as he wrote it during a difficult period in his life, but the piece is multi-layered and accommodates more than tragedy alone.

Few pieces have suffered a more peculiar fate than Robert Schumann’s Violin Concerto in D Minor. After having been forgotten for more than 80 years, it was put forward by the Nazis as an ”Aryan” alternative to Mendelssohn’s banned violin concerto, and was first performed by Georg Kulenkampf in Berlin on November 26, 1937. One month later, the concerto was performed in the United States by violinist Yehudi Menuhin, who felt that it was ”the link between the violin concertos of Beethoven and Brahms”.

The concerto was Schumann’s final orchestral work and was composed in the autumn of 1853 for violinist Joseph Joachim, the musical prodigy whom he met when visiting Mendelssohn in 1843. In a letter to Schumann, he had complained of the lack of a sensible repertoire for violin. Despite a successful collaboration on Schumann’s Fantasy for Violin and Orchestra in C Major in September 1853, the work on the concerto went nowhere. The concerto was thought to show signs of Schumann’s growing mental illness and after his passing in 1856, Clara and Joachim refused to have it published and hid it away. Nowadays, the concerto has been incorporated into the standing repertoire and can be heard on numerous recordings, with conductors such as Daniel Harding. The fateful, punctuated main theme of the first movement segues into a dreamlike, slow second movement (the only one that Joachim had accepted), which in turn changes, without pause, into a joyous, dance-like finale with almost gallant polonaise rhythms.

With his majestic symphonies, Anton Bruckner is one of the true eccentrics of the Romantic Movement. When he arrived in Vienna in 1868, he became embroiled in the ongoing conflict between Wagner and Brahms, on the side of Wagner, even though his theories on art did not hold any interest to Bruckner whatsoever. But Wagner’s orchestral technique had made an impression on him early on, during his days as organist at Linz Cathedral. It was not until the first performance of his seventh symphony, in Leipzig in 1884, that Bruckner was celebrated as a genius, and more so in Germany and the Netherlands than in the rest of Europe. Today, he is considered one of the pioneers in symphonic music and he also paved the way for composers such as Gustav Mahler.

The rumour about Bruckner’s insecurity being the reason for the numerous rewritings of his symphonies is not correct. On the contrary, he was far more artistically dedicated than many imagine. In addition, each symphony was published in two different editions by the Bruckner Society, founded in 1929, which hardly lessened the confusion around the different versions. However, the massive Symphony No. 5 in B Major – composed in 1875–76, revised up until 1878 and first performed in 1894 – exists in only one version. This is the only Bruckner symphony that has a slow introduction. It returns in the contrapuntally intensified finale with its culminating brass chorale.

Text: Henry Larsson


SWEDISH RADIO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA dot 2018/2019
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The Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra is a multiple-award-winning ensemble renowned for its high artistic standard and stylistic breadth, as well as collaborations with the world’s finest composers, conductors, and soloists. It regularly tours all over Europe and the world and has an extensive and acclaimed recording catalogue.

Daniel Harding has been Music Director of the SRSO since 2007, and since 2019 also its Artistic Director. His tenure will last throughout the 2024/2025 season. Two of the orchestra’s former chief conductors, Herbert Blomstedt and Esa-Pekka Salonen, have since been named Conductors Laureate, and continue to perform regularly with the orchestra.

The Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra performs at Berwaldhallen, concert hall of the Swedish Radio, and is a cornerstone of Swedish public service broadcasting. Its concerts are heard weekly on the Swedish classical radio P2 and regularly on national public television SVT. Several concerts are also streamed on-demand on Berwaldhallen Play and broadcast globally through the EBU.

Daniel Harding is Music and Artistic Director of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, with whom in 2022 he celebrated his 15-year anniversary. In the 2014/2015 season, he devised and curated the celebrated Interplay Festival, featuring concerts and related inspirational talks with renowned artists and academics. As Artistic Director, he continues this type of influential programming. Harding is also Conductor Laureate of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, with whom he has worked for over 20 years, and Music Director of Youth Music Culture, The Greater Bay Area in China. The 2024/2025 season will be his first as Music Director at the Academia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome.

Harding is a regular visitor to the world’s foremost orchestras, including the Wiener Philharmoniker, Berliner Philharmoniker, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Staatskapelle Dresden and the Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala. In the US, he has appeared with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, The Cleveland Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, and the San Francisco Symphony. A renowned opera conductor, he has led acclaimed productions at the Teatro alla Scala Milan, Wiener Staatsoper, Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, and at the Aix-en-Provence and Salzburg Festivals. He was Music Director of the Orchestre de Paris, the Anima Mundi festival of Pisa, and Principal Guest Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra.

Daniel Harding tours regularly with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, performing at prestigious venues all over Europe and the world, and has recorded several acclaimed and award-winning albums with the orchestra. His tenure as Music and Artistic Director will last throughout the 2024/2025 season. “It is increasingly rare that the relationship between a conductor and an orchestra not only lasts for more than a decade, but keeps growing,” he says about working with the orchestra.

In 2002, Harding was awarded the title Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Government, and in 2017 nominated to the position Officier des Arts et des Lettres. In 2012, he was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music. In 2021, he was appointed Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. Daniel Harding grew up in Oxford, England, and played trumpet before taking up conducting in his late teens. He is also, since 2016, a qualified airline pilot.

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Tyska violinisten Veronika Eberle hyllas för sin sällsynta balans och mognad i sitt musicerande, egenskaper som tagit henne till flera av världens främsta orkestrar, konsertscener och internationella festivaler. Genombrottet kom när hon som sextonåring framförde Beethovens violinkonsert tillsammans med Berliner Philharmoniker och Simon Rattle under påskfestivalen i Salzburg 2006. Sedan dess har hon arbetat med dirigenter som Paavo Järvi, Alan Gilbert, Kent Nagano, Yannick Nézet-Séguin och James Gaffigan och med orkestrar som London Symphony Orchestra, Tonhalle Orchester Zürich, New York Philharmonic, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig och Concertgebouworkest Amsterdam. Eberle spelar på en Stradivarius från 1693 utlånad av Reinhold Würth Musikstiftung.

Concert length: 2 h 25 min incl. intermission