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Here you can find almost anything about all the concerts Gothenburg Symphony has played over the years, both in the Concert Hall and on tour. Search for conductors, soloists and other artists that has played together with us. Or search for composers and music that we have played. And filter on specific seasons. Guesting orchestras and ensembles are also included in the archive. The result is presented by season.

14 concerts

1956-01-22 17:00 Stora salen

Göteborgs Symfoniker

Programme

Initially, Sibelius believed this first symphony would be programmatic: a symphony telling of his homeland’s geology and the triumph of Christianity over paganism. But seven years after the success of his choral-orchestral work based Finnish folklore Kullervo, friends and critics were urging Sibelius to think in more rigorous symphonic terms. Finland, they argued, needed art that was more international than parochial – a symphony that stood its ground on musical terms alone. Such thinking would give the First Symphony its musical weight irrespective of political context. In his student days in Vienna and Berlin, Sibelius’s teachers had stressed the importance of working through musical themes – lathing them continuously until they were fit for purpose. Ultimately, Sibelius took that advice to a level that couldn’t have been anticipated. Already in this symphony, the composer was handling his material in a distinctive way. Its misty opening on a solitary clarinet doesn’t just prepare us for the shock of the movement’s fast-paced Allegro; it infiltrates the work’s musical ideas like nutrients in their soil. The shape of the clarinet’s theme can be detected in numerous fragments right up to the final bars. The fourth movement launches with a transfigured version of it on thrusting strings. That gesture speaks of another conceptual difference in Sibelius’s symphonic designs: his response to the colours and capabilities of instruments. In a departure from traditional Germanic symphonic argument (which would make sense on a piano), Sibelius allowed the particular colour of instruments and instrumental groups to shape the path of his music. The symphony’s opening clarinet solo presents one example. The long-held pedal notes in the slow Andante, and the pizzicatos of the Scherzo, two more. These led the critic Ernest Newman to conclude that ‘every page breathes of another manner of thought, another way of living, even another landscape.’ That ‘other way of living’ can be rationalized. The use of recitation – a note repeating itself, like something half-sung – has its roots in Finland’s runic singing tradition. Others have heard something distinctly Russian in the clarinet solo, in the fur-wrapped melancholy of the slow movement and in the feverish way in which the final Allegro molto erupts. It’s in this movement that we hear Sibelius at his most unique. The organic treatment of themes continues. But as part of that process, the movement appears to reconcile the symphony’s poles of energy and stasis in a way only Sibelius could have conceived: by tricking us into assuming the music is operating at one distinct velocity when it’s actually locked into another. Andrew Mellor, from Sibelius: Symphony 1 & En Saga; Rouvali & Göteborgs Symfoniker (Alpha, 2019)

Verdi La Traviata: Violettas Scen Och Aria

Mozart Le nozze di Figaro: Deh, vieni, non tardar

Mozart Aria of the Queen of the night from Zauberflöte

Rossini Barberaren i Sevilla: Rosinas aria "Una voce poco fà" akt I

Participants

Matti Rubinstein Conductor

Margareta Hallin soprano

1942-04-26 20:00 Stora salen

Göteborgs Symfoniker

Programme

Mozart Overture to Die Zauberflöte

Mozart Trollflöjten: Aria, Pamina, akt II "Ach, ich fühl's, es ist verschwunden"

Mozart Aria of the Queen of the night from Zauberflöte

Rangström Divertimento elegiaco, svit f.stråkorkester

Intermission 25 min

Kuula Pirun Polska /djävulsdans/

Rangström Rondeau, sång m.orkester

Rangström Der flöj en Fugl over Sti, sång m.orkester

Rangström Flickan under nymånen, sång m.orkester

Frumerie Auf dem Flusse from Four Chinese poems

Frumerie Die Einsame from Four Chinese poems

Smetana Ma Vlast: From Bohemia's Fields And Groves

Participants

Sixten Eckerberg Conductor

Hjördis Schymberg soprano

1937-01-03 19:30 Stora salen

Göteborgs Symfoniker

Programme

Haydn Symfoni nr 86

Mozart Aria of the Queen of the night from Zauberflöte

Corelli La Folia

Nystroem Jag har ett hem vid havet

Haquinius Skaergaardsö, Sång M.ork.

Melchers "Si, skön är du, min älskling" from Song of Songs

Melchers He, Zigeuner greife in die Saiten ein

George Bizet (1838-1875) L'Arlésienne Suite No. 1 Preludium Menuett Adagietto Carillon Author Alphonse Daudet depicted the countryside and people of exotic Provence. One of his most beloved short stories he called The Girl from Arles, which he expanded into a drama in five acts. The play eventually became an opera by Francesco Cilea (1897), but the stage music composed by Georges Bizet was most appreciated. In total, he contributed 27 short vignettes for a small chamber orchestra of 26 musicians, the Théatre de Vaudeville could not afford more. Bizet himself contributed free piano playing. A few movements were written for choir. The first performance on 1 October 1872 was a complete flop, and the play was closed after 21 performances for half a salon. The author exclaimed: "It was a dazzling fiasco with the most charming music in the world, costumes of silk and velvet, and Opéra-Comique scenery. I left the theater dejected, and with the same laughter that pierced the tragic scenes still in my ears, I resolved to write no more plays." But Bizet believed in his music and was eager to save it, so he immediately compiled four of the pieces into an orchestral suite, while arranging them for large symphony orchestra, retaining the important saxophone part; an exciting, new instrument that until now has been mostly used for experiments. This first suite was premiered six weeks after the stage premiere, and was an immediate success. He did not keep the chronology of the drama, it was more important that the movements create a unity. The plot is very simple but told with psychological depth in a dreamy and poetic way. "His name was Jan. He only had eyes for one - a little girl from Arles, dressed in velvet and lace, whom he had once met in the market place in Arles. At his house - to begin with - the party was not looked upon kindly. It was said that the girl was coquettish and her parents were not from the area, but Jan wanted his girl from Arles at all costs. He said: I will die if I don't get her." These few words capture and summarize the whole story. Everything revolves around her, but the girl from Arles never appears on stage, and he takes his own life when it becomes clear to him that she has another lover. Those who know their Christmas music recognize the Kings' March in the opening movement.

Bizet L'Arlésienne: Suite No. 2