Göteborgs Konserthus Poulenc Concerto for Two Pianos

Elena Langer (f 1974) Figaro gets a divorce, suitw Night at the Almaviva Castle - Angelika and Serafin. Love song - The Escape - The Major - Susanna and Cherubino. Less of a love song. -A mad day The six-movement orchestral suite is based on Russian-British Elena Langer's opera Figaro Gets a Divorce, which premiered in Wales in 2016. The libretto extends the story of Figaro, as we know it from Mozart's and Rossini's operas, and places it in modern times. What happens to the wealthy Almaviva family when they have to flee a revolution in 20th century Europe? The Count now has an illegitimate daughter named Angelika with Barbarina, the Countess has given birth to Serafin (the result of her liaison with Cherubino) and an evil Major is blackmailing her. The suite begins mysteriously. Flutes, piccolos, celestas, and other high-pitched instruments create a strange, exotic, and slightly menacing landscape that, according to Langer's program note, is filled with the sounds of "cicadas, insects, and birds in the warm nocturnal garden." Both exotic and erotic undercurrents are evident in the subsequent love scene between the two illegitimate children. The humorous third movement depicts the family's escape and transitions into a nostalgic scene with traces of both West Side Story and the blues. Once at the finale, the title refers to the "crazy day" of Figaro's wedding and becomes a rhythmically driven summary of the opera as a whole.

Francis Poulenc (1899-1963) Concerto for two pianos and orchestra Allegro ma non troppo Larghetto Finale The French Francis Poulenc already became successful early on, and the debut works from his late teens were played throughout his life. Much of his early output came to be characterized by humor and play with influences from cabaret and jazz, as well as from colleagues such as Offenbach. The double concerto for piano was written in 1932 when his patron thought that Poulenc and his pianist friend, Jacques Fevrier, deserved to appear at a festival in Venice. Poulenc used impulses from both Mozart and Stravinsky with marked percussion elements. The friends Poulenc and Fevrier recorded the concert themselves.

Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953) From Romeo och Julia Introduction - Montagues and Capulets - The child Juliet - Masks - Romeo and Juliet: balcony scene - Death of Tybalt - Juliet alone - Romeo at Juliet's tomb - Death of Juliet For 400 years, Shakespeare's works have been an inexhaustible source of inspiration for composers. Iago's jealousy, Lady Macbeth's evil, Falstaff's gluttony, the enchanted forest romance in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Ariel and Caliban's eternal battle in The Tempest; all are themes that have given rise to countless musical expositions. But the undying love between Romeo and Juliet, the family conflict of life and death and the final tragedy for the young lovers, might be the drama that has left the deepest musical traces. Nowadays, it is not least musical composers who constantly return to Shakespeare, and Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story is certainly not the only golden egg. As early as 1938, Richard Rogers and Lorenz Hart made Boys from Syracuse based on the rather unknown comedy The Comedy of Errors. Cole Porter's "Kiss me Kate", based on The Taming of the Shrew, became a Broadway hit with over 1,000 performances. But of course it was when the Bernstein-Laurents-Sondheim trio transplanted the Romeo and Juliet motif into the racial conflicts between two youth leagues in Manhattan that Shakespeare became a reality for a whole world again. The question is whether there are so many more remnants of classical education that are known by today's youth. But almost everyone has heard of Romeo and Juliet. In 1944, Sergei Prokofiev received an order from the Kirov Theater in Leningrad for a ballet about Romeo and Juliet. The music was composed in 1935-1936, but since most ballet experts believed that the music was completely impossible for dance use, the set dragged on. They also tried to influence the composer to insert a "happy ending". Only after strong protests from literary expertise was it possible to preserve the original. As early as October 1936, however, Prokofiev had played some piano transcriptions of the ballet music at a concert in Moscow and had been praised by Izvestia's critics for his new "realistic language". Impatient with all the fuss with the Kirov Theater, he proceeded to arrange a couple of orchestral suites from the ballet music. Suite No. 1 was performed in Moscow in November 1936, and in April 1937 the composer himself conducted the second suite in Leningrad. Later that year, he performed a piano suite comprising ten excerpts from the ballet. A few years later he also compiled a third orchestral suite. The premiere of Prokofiev's ballet came to pass the Kirov Theater. Instead, it took place at a provincial theater in Brno, Czechoslovakia in December 1938. The problem was the "chamber qualities" of the music, all the harmonic rhythms and subtleties and the transparent orchestration, which terrified the dancers. Prokofiev was furious at the protests: "I know what you want. You want drums, not music." Eventually, Romeo and Juliet came to be regarded as the beginning of a new era in Russian ballet.

The Gothenburg Symphony was formed in 1905 and today consists of 109 musicians. The orchestra's base is Göteborgs Konserthus, the funk gem at Götaplatsen that has gathered music lovers since 1935. Since the 2017-2018 season, Santtu-Matias Rouvali has been Chief conductor of the Gothenburg Symphony. Since the 2019-2020 season, Barbara Hannigan is Principal guest conductor. We are also a proud partner of Barbara Hannigan's Equilibrium mentoring program focusing on young singers at the start of their careers. Wilhelm Stenhammar was the orchestra's chief conductor from 1907 to 1922. He gave the orchestra a strong Nordic profile and invited colleagues Carl Nielsen and Jean Sibelius to the orchestra. Under the direction of conductor Neeme Järvi from 1982-2004, the orchestra made a series of international tours as well as a hundred disc recordings and established themselves among Europe's leading orchestras. In 1996, the Swedish Riksdag appointed the Gothenburg Symphony as Sweden's National Orchestra. In recent decades, the orchestra has had prominent chief conductors such as Mario Venzago and Gustavo Dudamel, following Kent Nagano as Principal Guest conductor. Anna-Karin Larsson is CEO and artistic director, Gustavo Dudamel honorary conductor and Neeme Järvi chief conductor emeritus. The orchestra's owner is the Västra Götaland Region. The Gothenburg Symphony works regularly with conductors such as Herbert Blomstedt, Joana Carneiro, Jukka-Pekka Saraste, Christian Zacharias and Anja Bihlmaier.

Anna Rakitina has established herself as one of the most exciting and sought-after conductors of her generation. She has made acclaimed appearances with the symphony orchestras in Chicago, Boston and San Francisco, with the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Tonkünstler -Orchester, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Orchester Philharmonique de Radio France, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin and the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra. Anna Rakitina works with soloists such as Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Alexandre Kantorow, Inon Barnatan, Joshua Bell, Renaud Capuçon, Augustin Hadelich, Gil Shaham, Christian Tetzlaff, Raphaela Gromes and Alisa Weilerstein. Among contemporary composers, she has notably worked with Elena Langer and Ellen Reid. Rakitina was assistant conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 2019-2023. Previously, she was a Dudamel Fellow at the Los Angeles Philharmonic and won second prize at the 2018 Malko Competition. Born in Moscow to a Ukrainian father and Russian mother, Rakitina grew up in a musical family and began her training as a violinist. The concert with the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra is her debut in Gothenburg.

Lucas and Arthur Jussen from the Netherlands form something as unusual as a piano duo. With their energetic, almost symbiotic playing, they are praised by press and audience alike. The Jussen brothers have performed with orchestras internationally, including the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Budapest Festival Orchestra, the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields. They collaborate with famous conductors such as Christoph Eschenbach, Iván Fischer, Sir Neville Marriner, Andris Nelsons, Yannick Nezét-Séguin, Jukka-Pekka Saraste and Jaap van Zweden. During the 2024-2025 season, the Jussen brothers are Artists in Residence at the Orchester Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo. Other highlights include a European tour with the Gewandhausorchester as well as debuts with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Lahti Symphony Orchestra and Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra. The Jussen brothers have recorded Poulenc's Concerto for Two Pianos on disc and also Saint-Saëns' Carnival of the Animals together with the Concertgebouw Orchestra. The latest addition to their discography is Dutch Masters from 2022, which is devoted to works by Dutch composers, in collaboration with, among others, the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra. Lucas and Arthur performed as children for Dutch Queen Beatrix. In 2005 they began studying with the Portuguese pianist Maria João Pires. They have degrees from the USA and the Madrid and Amsterdam conservatories, respectively.