Göteborgs Konserthus Season opening with Ava Bahari

Max Savikangas (b 1969) War or Peace for Symphony Orchestra (Gothenburg Symphony Commission) Max Savikangas is originally a viola player and founded the Grammy-awarded Uusinta Ensemble 25 years ago. He studied composition for Anders Eliasson above all, but also Paavo Heininen and Kaija Saariaho. He has composed over 130 works for chamber ensemble and orchestra, vocal music, electroacoustic music and music for art projects. His works have been performed in the Nordic countries as well as Holland, Hungary, Poland, Switzerland, Austria, Russia, USA, Canada, Australia, Brazil and South Africa. His largest work is the seven-hour electroacoustic sound installation Hammer, Anvil, Stirrup (2005), which was nominated for the Finnish Teosto Prize. War or Peace raises questions about human existence. Where the words end, the music and sounds take over. The composer himself writes: “Ultimately, this composition asks pressing questions: What defines us? Where do we stand? What is a meaningful life? And in the midst of it all, the eternal question remains: war or peace?” The work is a joint commission by the Gothenburg Symphony and the Turku Philharmonic Orchestra.

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) Violin Concerto in D Toccata Aria 1 Aria 2 Capriccio The violin concerto in D major was written to order; Stravinsky anyway composed between 9 and 5 without being driven by any other inspiration than the purely artistic, and was just as likely to deliver commissioned works as anything else. Here it was Willi Strecker, director of the publisher Schott, who suggested that Stravinsky write a violin concerto for young Samuel Dushkin. Stravinsky had taken an interest in the solo violin earlier, in The Soldier's Tale (1918), but did not yet feel quite sure of his qualifications to write a true virtuoso concerto. However, he met with Dushkin, showed him the chord that would later begin each of the violin concerto's four movements, and asked Dushkin if it was possible to play. Dushkin initially said no but later changed his mind, whereupon the matter was settled. In 1931, the concert received its premiere in Berlin. The two intermediate movements are both named Aria but still contain quite a few cantabile rest points. It is mainly in the second aria that the model Bach peeks out for a short while. The finale's capriccio offers the concert's most concert-like music, where the soloist comes to the fore most.

Jean Sibelius (1865-1957) Lemminkäinen Suite Op 22 Lemminkäinen an the Maidens of the island The Swan of Tuonela Lemminkäinen in Tuonela Lemminkäinen's Return On April 13, 1896, Jean Sibelius gave his own portrait concert in Helsinki, and as the biggest novelty, he presented a large commissioned work called "Symphonic poems to motifs from the Lemminkäinen myth". The suite consisted of four movements, four legends, which immediately caused great happiness. It was not the first (or last) time Sibelius won success with motifs inspired by the Finnish folk poem Kalevala. The central figure is, of course, Lemminkäinen - the hero who is as keen on love adventures as he is on military exploits. For each of the four sections in the score, Sibelius quoted a few lines from the Kalevala. In the first poem, Lemminkäinen and the maidens on the island, the hero steers the schooner towards the shore and anchors at the end of Saari's headland (the word saari means island in Finnish). This happens to chords that have obviously been colored by the composer's encounter with Wagner's music in the summer of 1894. The following flicker of light, on the other hand, has an almost impressionistic enchantment and depicts the hero's dalliances with the island's maidens. There is a lot of fairy-tale atmosphere here and in the final acts he says goodbye to the girls with a string note in ppp. The second movement, Tuonela's Swan, has become by far the most played of these four legends and the depiction of the swan on the black river of Hades has become a poignant symphonic poem where soloist elements of English horn create a wistful, distant mood. But in other ways too, Sibelius's orchestration triumphs in this particular piece: the harp, bass clarinet, bass drum, solo cello and solo viola all help to condense this landscape of death. You can, if you like, consider the four movements of Lemminkäinen's suite as a symphony - they have the expected characters of a symphony. In that case, Tuonela's swan would correspond to the slow movement. It has become a dark, desolate and mysterious Nordic music - but then we also find ourselves in the realm of the dead. Time is suspended, the swan completely inaccessible. The womanizer Lemminkäinen asks Pohjola, the symbol of the Nordic, for his daughter's hand. But to be approved, he must undergo a series of difficult trials, including killing Tuonela's swan. He is subjected to many insidious betrayals before he is finally dismembered and thrown into the river. The middle part is icy cold, filled with magic, when Lemminkäinen's mother collects her son's remains and "helped the young hero to his former beautiful being". In the final act's solo cello, he has returned to life. The hero's journey home is a brilliant rondo that constantly grows in intensity. The unifying theme depicts the journey itself, while the episodes deal with what happens after the journey. It is proud music, well suited to strengthen the Finnish national feeling. 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.

Santtu-Matias Rouvali is Chief Conductor of Gothenburg Symphony since 2017, a position that runs until 2025. He also has a successful international conducting career and has been hailed by The Guardian as "the latest great talent of the Finnish conducting tradition that you just have to listen to". He has toured with the Gothenburg Symphony and pianist Hélène Grimaud in Nordic capitals and with pianist Alice Sara Ott and percussionist Martin Grubinger in Germany. In autumn 2023, he guest-performed with the Gothenburg Symphony and the violinist Arabella Steinbacher in Salzburg and Vienna. Concerts in Gothenburg in the 2023-2024 season included music by Boulanger, Saariaho, Tchaikovsky and Beethoven. Santtu-Matias Rouvali also led the Gothenburg Symphony in the European premiere of Julia Wolfe's choral drama Fire in My Mouth as well as sold-out concerts with Stravinsky's Rite of Spring and Rachmaninoff's 2nd Piano Concerto. Santtu-Matias Rouvali also continued his collaborations with top-level orchestras and concert halls across Europe and the US, including the BBC Proms and the New York Philharmonic. He collaborates with soloists such as Leif Ove Andsnes, Nemanja Radulovic, Leonidas Kavakos, Bruce Liu, Sheku Kanneh-Mason, Vadim Gluzman, Randall Goosby and Vilde Frang. Since 2021, Santtu-Matias Rouvali is also Chief Conductor of the Philharmonia Orchestra in London. 2013-2023 he was Chief Conductor of the Tampere Symphony Orchestra. Tours with the Gothenburg Symphony in the 2024-2025 season include guest performances in Malmö, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Stuttgart, Prague and Dresden. With the Philharmonia he will visit Helsinki, Tallinn, Japan and Spain. He also makes appearances with the Chicago Symphony and Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich. With the Gothenburg Symphony, Santtu-Matias Rouvali released in January 2024 a recording of Sibelius 4a, the fourth album in his Sibelius cycle (Alpha Classics). In April 2024 he released Beethoven's Triple Concerto in a recording with the Philharmonia, Benjamin Grosvenor, Nicola Benedetti and Sheku Kanneh-Mason (Decca). When he is not conducting, he devotes himself to farming and fishing at his farm outside Tampere.

The violinist Ava Bahari was born in 1996 in Gothenburg. She began playing the violin at the age of three and gave her first solo concert at age eight in the Gothenburg Concert Hall. She studied at the Oslo Music Academy's Young Artist Program under the tutelage of Prof. Terje Moe Hansen. From 2011 to 2015, she continued her studies with Prof. Per Enoksson in Gothenburg Symphony. In 2015, Ava Bahari began her Bachelor and Master studies at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler Berlin under the guidance of Prof. Kolja Blacher and received her Diploma in May 2024. In 2021, she also completed a degree at the Accademia Stauffer in Cremona, Italy. Ava Bahari has received numerous awards including 3rd Prize at the Premio Paganini Competition in Genova, 4th Prize at the Concours International Tibor Varga in Sion in 2021, and 1st Prize at the Aurora Music Competition in Stockholm in 2019. Throughout her career, Bahari has had the privilege of being mentored by some of the world's most renowned violinists and pedagogues including Leonidas Kavakos, Mihaela Martin, Pierre Amoyal, Midori Goto and Boris Kuschnir. Bahari has worked with conductors such as Santtu-Matias Rouvali, Pekka Kuusisto and Ryan Bancroft and performed with esteemed orchestras such as the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Teatro Carlo Felice Genova, Baden-Baden Philharmonie, Malmö Symphony Orchestra, Odense Symphony Orchestra and Gävle Symphony Orchestra. Upcoming orchestral debut in the next season includes concerts with The Philharmonia Orchestra, Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, Helsinki Philharmonic and BBC National Orchestra of Wales. Some of her more notable recital performances include a Paganini recital at the Seoul Arts Center, a recital on the "Stauffer" Guarneri del Gesù 1734 in museo del Violino Cremona and a recital in Konzerthaus Berlin. Ava Bahari has also received music and culture scholarships from Sten A Olsson's Foundation for Research and Culture, Royal Society of Science and Knowledge in Gothenburg and the Willinska Foundation. With the Gothenburg Symphony, she made her soloist debut in January 2023 in Schönberg's violin concerto.