Göteborgs Konserthus VÄGUS Winter Concert

Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) Tzigane Tzigane comes from the Hungarian cigány, gypsy. Ravel gets straight to the point in his title: his piece with its slow, rhapsodic opening and accelerating ending where the strings vibrate with both beautiful singing and pizzicato is his own free expression of the violin art that in the 19th century was developed to new virtuosic levels by roma violinists in mainly Hungary. Their orchestras became touring star ensembles, conquering audiences with speed and fanfare with verbunkos music and captivating csardas (dances). Ravel wrote his piece for one of the more prominent violinists of the time, Hungarian Jelly d'Aranyi. To have a work written by Ravel – after Debussy's death in 1918 the greatest living French composer at the time – was quite a feat. Ravel worked slowly and his output was hardly large. From 1924 until his death in 1937, he composed only a handful of works: Bolero, the two piano concertos, the violin sonata, a couple of smaller orchestral pieces and a few songs. The first version of Tzigane was written for violin and luthéal, a device by the Belgian organ builder Georges Cloetens. This iron structure was mounted over the strings of a grand piano and could, with a number of different registrations, be made to sound like a harpsichord and parade instrument cimbalom, the stringed instrument played with mallets and producing a colorful and harmonic sound. (Modern listeners have also drawn comparisons to the Fender Rhodes, the electric piano!) Some of these tonal effects have been carried over by Ravel in the orchestration he made later that year. The harp substitutes here and there as a luthéal disguised as a cimbalom. When Jelly d'Aranyi played Tzigane in Paris in 1924, a reviewer thought that Cloeten's invention most resembled "a rattling music box". But the orchestral version was well received at the premiere on November 30, and the concert rhapsody is still a lure for violinists without nerves.

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) Suite from The Firebird (1919) The 1919 suite uses a smaller orchestra - the original score's 1911 orchestra was, in Stravinsky's own words, "wastefully large" - and contains only the absolute best melodies. It is therefore easier to perform and has guaranteed to lead to more concert performances of the music, which pleased Stravinsky in several ways. He may have been a revolutionary composer, but as a freelancer he was a capitalist to the hilt. It may seem like a strange combination, but if you are an artist with great integrity, a high valuation of your own creation and its market potential automatically follows. Or as he himself said during a recording in the mid-1960s: "I like my own music. Excuse me." The Firebird was an unparalleled success for the Russian Ballet in Paris and even Stravinsky was at the top of the list. What a luxury to make use of the giant orchestra impresario Djagilev placed at his disposal with the ulterior motive of creating a sensation - "biggest, best and most beautiful!" The trick worked. Even today, The Firebird in its various forms is Stravinsky's most played work. His own memories of the premiere are fragmentary: "The first Firebird! I stood in the dark in the opera during eight orchestral rehearsals with Pierné as conductor. The stage and the entire theater sparkled at the premiere and I don't remember anything else".

Kim Phipps has been conductor and artistic director of Västra Götaland's Youth Orchestra since the start in 2000. He has also been artistic director of Läcköoperan since 2003 and is conductor of the award-winning Swedish Chamber Orchestra, which he also founded. Kim Phipps was born in London and received his early musical training as a chorister at New College, Oxford. He took his B.A. as a Choral Scholar at King's College, Cambridge and went on to study singing at the Guildhall School in London. Conducting studies in Munich and Manchester followed and he made his professional debut at the Gothenburg Opera in 1985. The next ten years were largely devoted to opera with engagements at Sadlers Wells and English National Opera in London, Krefeld in Germany, and Malmö in Sweden. In 1994 Phipps moved to Sweden and has since then lived in Gothenburg. Although opera is still an important feature of his career, orchestral and choral work is now equally important. Kim Phipps has conducted most of the professional orchestras in Sweden including the Gothenburg Symphony.

Violinist Victoria Stjerna has been assistant concertmaster in the chamber orchestra Musica Vitae. She is one of the founders of the O/modern Chamber Orchestra and tours regularly in Europe. She plays in a variety of contexts, including premieres of contemporary pieces, and explores improvisation in jazz and folk music. She has studied at the Edsberg Music Institute, the Royal Academy of Music in Stockholm and at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Bergamo, Italy.