Concert with two orchestra academies

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.