The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

Award-winning French cellist Gautier Capuçon was soloist for the world premiere of American Lera Auerbach’s cello concerto in 2021. The piece is now performed for the first time with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, which co-commissioned the work. When composing the music, she was inspired by a short story by Gogol about a government bureaucrat who descends into insanity and turns into a megalomaniac. Auerbach has later admitted that the work and its theme got an unexpected topicality later on ...

The conductor is French Lionel Bringuier, who debuted with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra as a substitute in January 2022. He is currently connected to the opera house in his home city of Nice. 

Two French works follow the intermission. We hear Paul Dukas’ symphonic poem The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, after Goethe’s poem by the same name. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is also well-known music from the Disney movie Fantasia. The poem is about an apprentice who gets a broom to carry water for him, but cannot get it to stop. Before that, we hear Albert Roussel’s most popular work – the wonderfully wild and captivating Symphony No. 3.