Göteborgs Konserthus From Mendelssohn to Mühlrad

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Join us on a unique journey through music history, from Felix Mendelssohn’s life-giving violin concerto with Ava Bahari, via captivating klezmer tones to searching contemporary music by Swede Jacob Mühlrad. This concert focuses on composers who have all brought forward their Jewish heritage. Conductor is American star Joshua Weilerstein.  

He has composed for robots and collaborated with Eva Dahlgren and Swedish House Mafia. In a few years, Jacob Mühlrad has established himself as one of Sweden’s most noted composers. In choral works such as Nigun and Kaddish, he etches the fate of his Jewish family into the present. Tonight’s concert begins with his first major orchestral work, REMS.

Presenter is Kristian Wedel, journalist and writer, who will talk about the jewish history of Gothenburg. 

As a beacon of music history in the concert stands the famous violin concerto in E minor by Felix Mendelssohn. A German-Jewish composer who strived to unite issues of spirituality and religious tolerance within society and within himself. But in Nazi Germany, Mendelssohn’s greatness was denied and his name was erased from public life.

The soloist is international star violinist Ava Bahari, born in Gothenburg where she made her debut as a soloist at the age of eight in the Gothenburg Concert Hall.

Composers Mieczysław “Moshe” Weinberg and Pavel Haas both had their destinies shaped by persecution. The remarkable symphony that was completed long after Haas’s death bears witness to how artistry has been eradicated with ideology as a weapon. Before that, we hear Jewish prayer song and Nordic folktone united by Finnish-Swedish Moses Pergament.

Conductor is young American star Joshua Weilerstein, Chief Conductor of the Aalborg Symphony Orchestra and appreciated by millions of listeners for his classic podcast Sticky Notes.  

Experience an evening where art and identity are woven together in unique musical stories, as engaging then as now.  

The concert is part of the celebration of Jewish life in Sweden 250 years.