SWEDISH SOLOIST PRIZE FINAL
Three fantastic young soloists perform three of the most beloved concertos from the 19th and 20th century: From the budding romanticism of Beethoven, through Dvořák’s rousing national idiom, to Nielsen’s playful neoclassicism. Don’t miss this thrilling final concert with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and conductor Tobias Ringborg. The concert will be livestreamed at Berwaldhallen Play.
Participants
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.
Tobias Ringborg is equally appreciated in opera houses and concert halls – as a conductor, soloist and chamber musician. Winning the prestigious Swedish Soloist Prize in 1994 launched his career – the same year, he graduated with diploma from the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, afterwards continuing his studies at the Juilliard School in New York City.
As a violinist, he has performed with all the major Swedish symphony and chamber orchestras and has worked with conductors including Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Neeme Järvi, Okko Kamu, Sakari Oramo and Daniel Harding. His international merits include performances with orchestras all over Europe and the United States, and first prize in Concours International de Musique de Chimay in Belgium.
Ringborg started his conducting career when he won an international conducting competition in Helsinki in 2000, and has since appeared with most Scandinavian orchestras, often in dual roles as both conductor and solo violinist. He has a life-long passion for opera, debuting as opera conductor at Folkoperan in Stockholm in 2001, appearing later that same year at the Royal Swedish Opera, being hired by the Malmö Opera the following year.
He is a potent ambassador for Swedish music, having recorded numerous albums with chamber music and violin concertos by primarily Swedish composers. He plays on a Gagliano generously loaned by the Järnåker Foundation. Tobias Ringborg has received the Herbert Blomstedt Conductor’s Award and is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music.
Flöjtisten Laura Michelin är en flitigt anlitad solist, kammar- och orkestermusiker som för närvarande går sitt sista år på masterprogrammet vid Hochschule für Musik und Theater i München för professor Andrea Lieberknecht. Vid sidan av sina studier frilansar hon i de olika svenska orkestrarna. Tidigare studerade hon i fyra år vid Kungliga Musikhögskolan i Stockholm för professor Tobias Carron. Laura har mottagit stipendier från bland andra Kungliga Musikaliska Akademien, Svenska Frimurarorden och 2019 dessutom G.T. Bäckmans stipendium, ett av Sveriges största kulturstipendier.
Journalist, scriptwriter and actor Erik Blix is an established and beloved Swedish Radio profile known for his work with the weekly satire programme Public Service as well as the daily talkshow P4 Extra. He has also worked on or appeared in shows including Detta har hänt, Brutal-TV, Fångarna på fortet and Riskradion.
As an actor, he has performed Anthony Swerling’s monologue The Politician’s Last Speech, Alfons’ father in Alfons and the Magician and Hotep in the Swedish version of The Prince of Egypt. In 1999–2006, he was editor-in-chief of renowned Swedish satirical magazine Grönköpings Veckoblad. He is also regularly engaged as a moderator, host and public speaker. He grew up in Malmö in southern Sweden.
Programme
As Napoleon’s army marched on the city in spring 1809, Beethoven was at home in Vienna, trying to compose his fifth piano concerto. Beethoven, who lived near the city wall, had to seek shelter in his brother’s cellar several times to get away from the noise of the battle. He wrote to his editor, “We have been through a great deal, everything that has happened here has weakened me body and soul.”
Beethoven first dedicated his third symphony to General Napoleon, but he furiously changed his mind when he heard that Napoleon had proclaimed himself emperor. Beethoven hated Napoleon for invading Vienna. His reaction was characteristic of the burgeoning national romanticism in Germany and Austria. No one knows why the fifth piano concert is known as the Emperor Concerto, it was not in tribute to Napoleon, and Beethoven never gave it that title. However, there is another, more poignant title – the “Military Concerto”.
Military concertos were common at the time, they included gunfire, trumpet fanfares and march rhythms. You could say that there are traces of this in the first movement of the piano concerto. The peaceful introduction to the second movement, however, is said to be based on Austrian pilgrim songs. This is after all one of Beethoven’s lighter solo concertos, and it is hard to make out traces of the difficult period during which it was composed. It was also during this period that the composer’s hearing began to deteriorate, which meant that he was unable to perform the work himself.
At the first performance in Leipzig in 1811 the audience was so delighted that “the usual expressions of acknowledgement and satisfaction” did not suffice. But after only one more performance it was hardly played at all until the mid-1800s, when printed sheet music was available and many skilled piano virtuosi were able to perform Beethoven’s music.
Although Beethoven was to live for another eighteen years, this was his last piano concerto, maybe because he was unable to play it, or because he did not think he could produce any more music in this genre. But he did compose other forms of music.
Text: Bengt Arwén
Approximate concert length: 2 hours 30 min (with intermission)
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