Göteborgs Konserthus Side by Side 2023: Closing Concert

Lili Boulanger grew up in a particularly musical environment. Her father Ernest (1815-1900) was a singing teacher and composer, mainly of light operas. Already at the age of 20, he had won the attractive Prix de Rome with the cantata Achilles. At the Paris Conservatoire, he had the Russian princess Raisa Myshetskaya, 43 years his junior, as a vocal student, and they married in 1877. In 1887, they had a daughter, Nadia, who was awarded second prize in the Prix de Rome in 1908 - she lived to be 92 years old and taught a long line of 20th-century foremost composers from around the world in composition. In 1893, the 77-year-old Ernest became the father of another daughter, Lili, who first studied with her sister and then with Gabriel Fauré, and who in 1913 was awarded that year's Prix de Rome! She became the first woman the French Academy deemed worthy of the grand prize. Unfortunately, she was sickly and weak, and was only 24 years old when she was swept away by Crohn's disease. Lili Boulanger managed to compose around 40 works during her too short life. Already at the age of 14, she had decided to become a composer. During her last year of life, Lili Boulanger composed "A spring morning", the last thing she wrote herself. She dictated the Pie Jesu prayer to her sister three weeks before she passed out powerless. D'un matin de printemps can be played for violin and piano or flute and piano, and is also available in an orchestral version. Given the circumstances, it's strange to listen to this carefree and positive piece, but she had just undergone an operation that appeared to be successful… As a curiosity, it can be mentioned that the asteroid 1181 has been named after Lili Boulanger, and a crater on Venus after Nadia Boulanger. STIG JACOBSSON

A devastatingly critical article was published in Pravda magazine in 1936 about Shostakovich's opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, which was described as "unsoviet, coarse, primitive and vulgar". The article coincided in time with Stalin's great purges, which also affected cultural policy. Shostakovich was caught in the cold and felt compelled to withdraw his newly written, dissonant Mahler-inspired Fourth Symphony. Instead, he made a scrap, and wrote the more easy-to-listen Fifth Symphony presented as "A Soviet Artist's Answer to Fair Criticism". The symphony follows the classical four-movement structure and has the same pattern as Beethoven's symphony of the same number. The work begins in tragic minor, but ends in sonorous major. As is customary with Shostakovich's music, it contains several different aspects, partly an arranged exterior that ostensibly celebrates communism, partly hidden themes that reflect more of his innermost thoughts and feelings. In the finale, Shostakovich's personal feelings and his public and social situation are finally intertwined. The theme is taken from a song he composed for a poem by Pushkin, Rebirth, composed just before the symphony. The text is about how the work of artistic genius is painted over with black brushstrokes by an insensitive "artist-barbarian", but emerges again clearly when the black paint peels off.

The Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra was founded in 1905 and currently consists of 109 musicians. The orchestra is based in Gothenburg Concert Hall – a gem of functionalism on Götaplatsen square that has enchanted music lovers since 1935. Wilhelm Stenhammar was the orchestra’s Chief Conductor from 1907 until 1922. He gave the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra a strong Nordic profile and invited his colleagues Carl Nielsen and Jean Sibelius to collaborate with the orchestra. Under the leadership of Chief Conductor Neeme Järvi between 1982 and 2004, the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra undertook a number of international tours and made a hundred or so album recordings while establishing itself as one of Europe’s foremost orchestras. In 1997 the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra received the title of the National Orchestra of Sweden. Since season 2017-2018 Santtu-Matias Rouvali is Chief Conductor of the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra. Since season 2019-2020 Barbara Hannigan is Principal Guest Conductor. Christoph Eschenbach was also Principal Guest Conductor of Gothenburg Symphony in the years 2019-2022 – together they formed a strong three-leaf clover consisting of three completely different types of artists. We are also extremely proud to be an official partner of soprano Barbara Hannigan’s mentor initiative Equilibrium, with focus on young singers and musicians who are just beginning their careers. Sten Cranner is the orchestra’s CEO and Artistic Director, while Gustavo Dudamel holds the title of Honorary Conductor and Neeme Järvi that of Principal Conductor Emeritus. Region Västra Götaland is owner of the orchestra. The Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra works regularly with conductors such as Herbert Blomstedt, Joana Carneiro, Jukka-Pekka Saraste, Christian Zacharias and Anja Bihlmaier.

For more than 15 years Manuel López-Gómez' worked side by side with Gustavo Dudamel on symphonic and opera projects such as La Bohème, La Traviata and Mahler's Eighth Symphony in Caracas, Don Giovanni in Los Angeles, the Brahms Symphonies in Paris and West Side Story with Cecilia Bartoli at the Salzburg Festival. In 2017-18, Manuel shared with him the musical direction of a new production of La Bohème at the Opéra Bastille in Paris. Manuel López-Gómez' reputation is established by successful appearances in North and Latin America, Europe, Asia and Australia. For Universal Music Italy he conducted and recorded the world premiere of the recently orchestrated opera Atahualpa by Carlo Enrico Pasta in Peru. Shortly after, he returned to this country for Gounod's Roméo et Juliette with Juan Diego Flórez. The Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro invited him for a production of Il Viaggio a Reims, and the Kristiansand Symphony Orchestra for Le Nozze di Figaro. Having been formed within El Sistema, he sees the dedication to young people and their musical training as a major duty of his profession. Currently, he fulfils this particular commitment as Music Director of the Bogotá Philharmonic Youth Orchestra.

Italian conductor Daniela Musca has been a recurring conductor at Side by Side since 2020. In the 2022-2023 season, she has appeared with the symphony orchestras in both Malmö, Turkku and Luxemburg, as well as with the Wermland Opera in Karlstad, the Stockholm Wind Orchestra and Östgötamusiken. In 2021, she made her debut at the Royal Opera in Stockholm with Rigoletto. She has conducted orchestras including the Gothenburg Symphony, Norrköping Symphony, Trondheim Symphony, Casco Phil, Frankfurt Opera and Museum Orchestra, Würzburg Philharmonic and Oulu Sinfonia. Born in Rome, she studied piano and chamber music at the Conservatorio Santa Cecilia, followed by a master's degree at Basel Music Academy. In 2006 she moved to Berlin to study orchestral conducting at the Hanns Eisler Hochschule. In 2017 she was a semi-finalist at the Georg Solti Conducting Competition in Frankfurt. As an assistant conductor she has worked at the Staatsoper Berlin, Bavarian State Opera, Deutsche Oper Berlin and Salzburg Festival.