RSPO Orchestra Academy

Since 2016, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra has hosted an ”Orchestra Academy”. The international RSPO Orchestra Academy is a one-year, advanced academic programme for young musicians. Under the guidance of the section leaders from the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and the Piteå School of Music, the musicians receive intensive training individually, in chamber music, and orchestral playing.

The academy also presents itself through a series of public chamber music concerts, such as this one featuring this year’s academy students. On this occasion, we  experience yet another collaboration between the orchestra academies of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the National Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra in Katowice.

The concert begins with an originally orchestrated work by the British-American composer Anna Clyne, which also includes recorded sounds from a music box that her father gave to her mother when he was courting her, as well as ambient sounds from her childhood in the coastal town of Brighton.

"It is five instruments conversing with each other," is how Carl Nielsen described his often-performed and much-loved Wind Quintet. He also noted that it cannot "be played without a deep feeling for nature." The piece is filled with surprising effects, but also pastoral and idyllic elements.

After the interval, the programme continues with music by two of Poland's foremost 20th-century composers. In Witold Lutosławski’s relatively early piece, Little Suite from 1950, the inspiration from folk music is clearly audible. Like Lutosławski, Grażyna Bacewicz found ways to maintain artistic integrity within the controlling communist climate of the mid-20th century. Her Concerto for String Orchestra from 1948 has become one of her most performed and beloved works, admired by, among others, her colleague Lutosławski.

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The partnership between Konserthuset Stockholm and the Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra in Katowice is taking place in 2024-2025, under the project name Institutions of the Future 2024-2025. This project is supported by the Polish Ministry of Culture under their Inspiring Culture initiative.

The music that Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) composed in the early 20th century was certainly not met with open arms and curiosity. On the contrary, it was often met with outright hostility.

In the Five Orchestral Pieces, Op. 16 from 1909 (the version for smaller ensemble is from 1920), he truly pushed the boundaries of traditional harmony and rhythm, with fragmented phrases and distinctive colourings. What his contemporaries, often hostile, perhaps failed to recognize was that he was building upon and expanding the late Romantic tradition – traces of which become evident once the dust has settled.

At this time, before the First World War, he was a student in Vienna of the composer and conductor Alexander von Zemlinsky. Later, Schoenberg and his own students –including Anton Webern and Alban Berg – would form the radical movement known as the "Second Viennese School" (the first being made up of the likes of Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven).

From the same year, 1909, we find Erwartung – a "monodrama" for soprano and chamber orchestra. He composed this incredibly intense, expressionistic music in just a few weeks, but it took fifteen years (!) before the work had its premiere in Prague in 1924, with his old teacher Zemlinsky conducting. In the dreamlike text, an anxious woman wanders through the forest, desperately searching for her lover.

Schoenberg said: ”In Erwartung the aim is to represent in slow motion everything that occurs during a single second of maximum spiritual excitement, stretching it out to half an hour”.

The vocal soloist is Elisabeth Meyer, who has performed in numerous roles at the Royal Swedish Opera and Folkoperan, among others. The concert is presented by Axel Englund, Professor of Literature, who has researched the relationship between words and music.

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In collaboration with the Royal College of Music, Stockholm University and Forum Modernism, with support from the Swedish Arts Council and Stockholm City.

Welcome to a vibrant concert where the Orchestra Academy of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra joins forces with musicians from El Sistema Södertälje and the Falun Conservatory of Music.

The RSPO Orchestra Academy is an academic specialist program with an international focus. El Sistema Södertälje, with which the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra has collaborated since its inception in 2012, is an orchestra school aimed at students from kindergarten upwards. The Falun Conservatory of Music is one of the country’s leading secondary-level institutions for young musicians with professional ambitions.

Two musicians from this season’s Orchestra Academy perform as soloists, namely the English-born oboist Clara May Teahan and the Spanish bassoonist Sabina Aran.

A similar collaboration between musicians and ensembles at different stages of their education also took place in 2022.

Since 2016, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra has hosted an ”Orchestra Academy”. The international RSPO Orchestra Academy is a one-year, advanced academic programme for young musicians. Under the guidance of the section leaders from the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and the Piteå School of Music, the musicians receive intensive training individually, in chamber music, and orchestral playing.

They also showcase their talents through a series of public chamber music concerts – such as this one featuring this year’s academy musicians.

Since 2016, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra has hosted an ”Orchestra Academy”. The international RSPO Orchestra Academy is a one-year, advanced academic programme for young musicians. Under the guidance of the section leaders from the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and the Piteå School of Music, the musicians receive intensive training individually, in chamber music, and orchestral playing.

They also showcase their talents through a series of public chamber music concerts – such as this one featuring this year’s academy musicians.

Since 2016, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra has hosted an ”Orchestra Academy”. The international RSPO Orchestra Academy is a one-year, advanced academic programme for young musicians. Under the guidance of the section leaders from the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and the Piteå School of Music, the musicians receive intensive training individually, in chamber music, and orchestral playing.

They also showcase their talents through a series of public chamber music concerts – such as this one featuring this year’s academy musicians.