Göteborgs Konserthus Contrasts with Streich and Bruckner

Lisa Streich (b. 1985) Ice Heart The orchestral work Ishjärta (Ice Heart) was commissioned for the Berlin Philharmonic and premiered in 2023. Lisa Streich was born in Värmland and grew up in Germany. She writes original scores for all the sounds of the orchestra with great inventiveness when it comes to instruments. For example, live instruments can be mixed with automated ones with motors, or as here, be joined by an egg slicer. The work depicts the two elements of the heart; one that is dense, warm and pulsating and one that is closed and isolated. What happens to the listener when two emotions appear in the music? "Is it possible to feel two emotions at the same time? Or does it create a third one that wasn't there before?"

Bruckner described his Symphony No. 5 as a "contrapuntal masterpiece" and named it his "Fantastic", perhaps a little surprising to us as he never got to hear it played during his lifetime - except in a stripped-down version for double piano. The first performance with orchestra didn't take place until April 9, 1894 in Graz, however in Bruckner's absence due to illness. This was an adaptation by the conductor Franz Schalk which is now described in Bärenreiter's large Bruckner handbook by Peter Gülke as "brutally altered, shortened and, by today's standards, distorted". In the final, 122 beats had been struck out. When the symphony was published in 1896, it was in Schalk's version. Bruckner was silent and suffered, never making a secret of the fact that he regarded his original versions as valid for future times. As usual, Bruckner in Symphony No. 5 approached the work with a small number of basic motifs which were twisted, turned and combined in tremendous concentration. He began the adagio in early February 1875, continued with the opening movement on 3 March, followed by the scherzo on 10 April (as a somewhat ironic development of the previous movement) and a month later the finale. The rewriting was finished on May 16, 1876 after - also as usual - rows of revisions that would continue in the future, however without resulting in several separate versions, as with the earlier symphonies. No. 5 is his only one with a slow introduction to a calm four-part movement that turns in fortissimo into a three-part chorale with powerful pizzicato elements. The idea of starting with the second movement becomes clear when the chorale prelude is worked on further, not at all to be joked about in the scherzo. His conception of irony is of a different kind. The central movement, however, is the finale, where the contrapuntal concentration of motifs from the opening three movements and a large crowning chorale with double fugue fully justify his name for the symphony, "the Fantastic".

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.

Jukka-Pekka Saraste has a strong relationship with works by Beethoven, Bruckner, Shostakovich, Stravinsky and Sibelius and is internationally acclaimed for his interpretations of Mahler. Born in Heinola, he began his career as a violinist before training as a conductor at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. In 2023 he took over as chief conductor and artistic director of the Helsinki Philharmonic. 2010-2019 he was chief conductor of the WDR Symphony Orchestra in Cologne and 2006-2013 music director and chief conductor of the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra. Previously, he held positions at the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. Jukka-Pekka Saraste is one of the founders of LEAD! Foundation, a mentorship program for young conductors and soloists based in Finland. Jukka-Pekka Saraste's guest involvement has led him to the major orchestras worldwide. He has developed a strong profile in opera and, after concert performances of Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex, Schönberg's Erwartung and Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle, had great success at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna with a new stage production of Mendelssohn's Elijah, directed by Calixto Bieito, and Korngold's Die tote Stadt at the Finnish National Opera. Jukka-Pekka Saraste has received the Pro Finlandia prize, the Sibelius Medal and the Finnish State Music Prize. He most recently guested Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra in December 2022 when he conducted Maria Dueñas in Tchaikovsky's violin concerto.

Karin Nelson holds a professorship in organ and church music at the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo and is professor of organ at the University of Gothenburg. In addition to concert activities in Sweden and abroad, Nelson has made several disc recordings, several of which together with other musicians from various genres where improvisation is included as a natural element. Karin Nelson was born in Skellefteå. After music teacher and church musician degrees from the conservatories of music in Piteå and Gothenburg, organ studies continued at the diploma program in Gothenburg, followed by organ and harpsichord studies at the Sweelinck Conservatory in Amsterdam. She was for several years the organist at the Hagakyrkan in Gothenburg and has played for a long time with the Gothenburg Symphony.