Göteborgs Konserthus Richter & Piazzolla seasons with Kerson Leong and Camerata Nordica

Information from Camerata Nordica

Kerson Leong & Camerata Nordica

EDVARD GRIEG (1843–1907) Våren (Last Spring), op. 34 no. 2
MAX RICHTER (b. 1966) Recomposed: The Four Seasons (after Vivaldi)
— Intermission —
ERNA TAURO (1916–1993) Höstvisa (arr. Hans-Erik Holgersson)
ASTOR PIAZZOLLA (1921–1992) The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires

Few programs capture the arc of the seasons as vividly as this one, moving from the tender melancholy of a Norwegian spring to the urban heat and longing of a Buenos Aires summer. At the center of the evening stands Canadian violinist Kerson Leong, one of the most compelling soloists of his generation.

Leong has been described as “not just one of Canada’s greatest violinists but one of the greatest violinists, period” by the Toronto Star. A First Prize winner at the International Yehudi Menuhin Violin Competition in 2010, he has since performed with leading orchestras and at major festivals across Europe, North America, and Asia. His most recent album, featuring the Britten and Bruch concertos with the Philharmonia Orchestra, received widespread critical acclaim, earning Editor’s Choice from Gramophone, five-star reviews from the Sunday Times and Diapason, and the Choc de Classica from Classica. Mentored by Augustin Dumay at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel in Belgium, Leong performs on the 1741 “ex Bohrer, Baumgartner” Guarneri del Gesù on generous loan from Canimex Inc., Canada.

The evening opens with Grieg’s Våren (Last Spring), the second of his Two Elegiac Melodies for string orchestra, op. 34. Originally a song setting of verses by the Norwegian poet Aasmund Olavsson Vinje, Grieg arranged it for strings in 1880. The poem describes the beauty of the Norwegian countryside emerging from winter, observed by a man who fears he may be seeing it for the last time. It is music of luminous, aching beauty and a perfect opening to an evening shaped by nature and the passage of time.
Max Richter’s Recomposed: The Four Seasons (2012) takes Vivaldi’s baroque masterpiece as its raw material, retaining only a fraction of the original while filtering it through a contemporary musical sensibility. The result is something at once deeply familiar and entirely new: a meditation on memory, landscape, and transformation that has become one of the most performed and recorded classical works of the 21st century.

After the intermission, Finnish composer Erna Tauro’s Höstvisa (Autumn Song, 1965), with its text by Tove Jansson, provides a moment of intimate Nordic reflection. Originally composed for voice and piano, this much-loved song, known across Scandinavia, is here presented in an arrangement for string orchestra by Hans-Erik Holgersson. A quietly devastating piece, it serves as a bridge between the two halves of the program, autumn following hard on the heels of summer.

The evening closes with Astor Piazzolla’s The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires, four tango-infused portraits of life in the Argentine capital, composed between the 1960s and 1970s. Performed here in Leonid Desyatnikov’s brilliant string orchestra arrangement, which weaves in allusions to Vivaldi’s original, the four movements crackle with rhythmic energy, passion, and nostalgia, bringing the evening’s seasonal journey to a blazing conclusion.

One of Sweden’s leading chamber orchestra, Camerata Nordica has performed at Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, and the BBC Proms, and is known for its distinctive, intimate approach to performance.

https://cameratanordica.com