Göteborgs Konserthus Hasselblad Award Concert with Neeme Järvi

Richard Strauss (1864-1949) Also sprach Zarathustra In October 1894, the 30-year-old Richard Strauss had become assistant to the chief conductor of the Munich Opera, Hermann Levi. He had to take on increasing responsibility, but absolutely did not want to give up his composing. He spent all his free time working on a new large symphonic poem "freely composed after Friedrich Nietzsche". It would turn out that it was so freely formed that the philosopher himself took a very negative view of Strauss's arrangement of the work. in August 1896 Levi resigned and Strauss was appointed the new principal conductor. By then, the composition Also sprach Zarathustra, "thus spoke Zarathustra", was already completed and the premiere took place on November 27 with the composer himself as conductor at a concert in Frankfurt. The music is in no way a musical translation of Nietzsche's controversial theories about the superman. No, there is not much philosophizing here at all, the down-to-earth composer was a stranger to such things, but all the more he had been carried away by the book's vivid and epic language. Strauss saw the positive sides of the author's message: the demand for freedom, the longing for a better world, the power of action. The descriptions of nature were the most important source of inspiration. The extensive orchestral poem is broken up into nine sections whose titles correspond to the names of chapters in the book (though not always in the same order). Between these there are only three general breaks, the rest go in one sweep. As a motto, he placed Nietzsche's "Ode to the Sun" with the call that "For too long we have dreamed of music, let us now wake up. We were sleepwalkers, let us now go out into the day…” The whole work begins with the sunrise: after long, grinding and very low Cs in double basses, contrabassoons and organ, the sun breaks out in the notes C, G and C2. This is probably the most glorious sunrise in the history of music. Its radiant power has long since been used in many different contexts that must have been foreign to Strauss. The music is used, among other things, as a theme in the science fiction film 2001 - A Space Odyssey. The following parts have the titles: "about the inhabitants of the afterlife" with a leitmotif from the Gregorian sequence Credo in unum Deum, "I believe in One God", "about the great longing", "about the joy and the passions" where the oboe intones a mourning melody. It is the dreams of the youth that are buried, now there is no return to the ivory tower, "The Grave Song", "On Science" with a parodic, academic fugue, where all twelve notes of the chromatic scale are found, "The Convalescent", "Dance Song" with waltz-like rhythms, flowing colors and a prominent violin solo. "Song of the Night Wanderer" is a heart-wrenching farewell song where the description of nature returns in a reconciling C major in the basses. In music, C major is allowed to represent man and nature, while B major represents the universe – two keys that are very far apart. At the end of the piece, none of them emerge victorious from the fight. STIG JACOBSSON

The Gothenburg Symphony was formed in 1905 and today consists of 109 musicians. The orchestra's base is Göteborgs Konserthus, the funk gem at Götaplatsen that has gathered music lovers since 1935. Since the 2017-2018 season, Santtu-Matias Rouvali has been Chief conductor of the Gothenburg Symphony. Since the 2019-2020 season, Barbara Hannigan is Principal guest conductor. We are also a proud partner of Barbara Hannigan's Equilibrium mentoring program focusing on young singers at the start of their careers. Wilhelm Stenhammar was the orchestra's chief conductor from 1907 to 1922. He gave the orchestra a strong Nordic profile and invited colleagues Carl Nielsen and Jean Sibelius to the orchestra. Under the direction of conductor Neeme Järvi from 1982-2004, the orchestra made a series of international tours as well as a hundred disc recordings and established themselves among Europe's leading orchestras. In 1996, the Swedish Riksdag appointed the Gothenburg Symphony as Sweden's National Orchestra. In recent decades, the orchestra has had prominent chief conductors such as Mario Venzago and Gustavo Dudamel, following Kent Nagano as Principal Guest conductor. Anna-Karin Larsson is CEO and artistic director, Gustavo Dudamel honorary conductor and Neeme Järvi chief conductor emeritus. The orchestra's owner is the Västra Götaland Region. The Gothenburg Symphony works regularly with conductors such as Herbert Blomstedt, Joana Carneiro, Jukka-Pekka Saraste, Christian Zacharias and Anja Bihlmaier.