Chamber music

What is chamber music?

Chamber music is for anyone who wants an intimate concert experience. Because the concerts are often given in a smaller auditorium with fewer musicians, you will be extra close to the music. The name also reveals, in a way, what it entails: music for a small room. A few hundred years ago, this often meant concerts in stately homes, and at the turn of the last century, it could involve so-called musical salons in bourgeois homes for a small audience. Throughout history, chamber music has also been the genre in which composers have courageously tried out new artistic paths and expressed their innermost feelings, such as the string quartets of Haydn or Beethoven, or the songs of Schubert.

Konserthuset’s chamber music auditorium, Grünewald Hall (named after the artist Isaac Grünewald, who turned the entire space into a work of art with incredible paintings and adornments), is certainly not as small as a living room, but the intimacy and phenomenal acoustics provide immediate contact with the chamber music performed here.

The Philharmonic Up Close

Musicians from the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra regularly perform chamber music. This is a way for individual musicians to come together and build their own concert programme comprising both classical masterpieces and less frequently performed music. It is also a chance for the musicians to develop their playing as an ensemble, with all of delicate nuances of the chamber music repertoire, and for listeners to simply enjoy!

The Philharmonic Up Close

Soup Concerts

Our soup concerts are one of our most popular chamber music concert subscriptions. At a soup concert, you can enjoy soup for lunch while listening to 45 minutes of varied, and quite often surprising music. Soup concerts frequently present new discoveries in chamber music. The concerts are often performed by musicians from the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra.

Konserthuset’s Soup Concerts

Lied Concerts

A “lied” is simply a song for voice and piano. In Swedish, it is referred to as a “romans,” though the German “lied” is also used for this form of chamber music. In our lied concerts, you will get to hear our foremost Swedish singers and international guests up close. The concerts often feature two singers who take turns singing with the pianist.

Konserthuset’s Lied Concerts

Organ Matinée

While organ matinées are indeed held in the main hall, they are nevertheless a form of chamber music: one musician and one instrument – even if this particular instrument happens to be Konserthuset’s organ, which has 6,100 pipes and an almost endless capacity for varying its sound. Top organists from all over the country perform in Konserthuset’s organ matinées, which are held mid-day and last for about 45 minutes.

Konserthuset’s Organ Matinées

Piano Subscription

Concerts for solo piano are yet another example of how chamber music can even generate intimacy in the main hall. The piano subscription features the world’s leading pianists each year, and it has become externally popular. Sometimes tickets are in such high demand that on-stage seats right beside the pianist are also available for sale to audience members. Concentration is at its peak as pianists transform a large auditorium into a small room, in which every whisper and nuance of the chamber music piece echoes through the darkened venue.

Piano Subscription

Chamber music on Konserthuset Play

Konserthuset Play is your online concert hall. Experience chamber music and the rest of our music offering whenever and wherever you like. Completely free. On Konserthuset Play, you will find chamber music and more performed by musicians from the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and recorded in the beautiful Grünewald Hall.

To Konserthuset Play