University of Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra
Conductor: Henrik Schaefer
Soloist: Jørgen Simarud Stabell, trombone
Programme
- Andrea Tarrodi: Ascent – Concerto for Orchestra
- Launy Grøndahl: Trombone Concerto
INTERMISSION
- Hector Berlioz: Symphonie fantastique
Andrea Tarrodi’s orchestral work Ascent, is a moving up from the ocean trench, from the low notes to the higher ones and from the elements of nature to the noise of the city. Music that finally “slowly rises over the treetops, higher and higher, out into the stillness of outer space” (Andrea Tarrodi).
Danish Launy Grøndahl (1886–1960) was for over 30 years conductor of the radio orchestra in Copenhagen. He also wrote a lot of music, including the internationally successful trombone concerto from 1924, composed during a stay in Italy. Here we meet a melodic, thoughtful and romantic work with “walking bass” and the blue notes of Gershwin.
With Symphonie fantastique, Hector Berlioz shocked the world in 1830. He broke the frames of the symphony, invented completely new sounds with his ingenious and innovative orchestration and frightened the audience. Even as late as 1908, when Wilhelm Stenhammar conducted the symphony for the first time in Gothenburg, the reception was similar: “…this strange and bizarre product of the ingenious imagination, and the volcanically simmering temperament, which here revel in sensual music paintings, but whose intense worship of the expressive power of the notes, reveals a marvellous lack of perception of the deeper essence of music.” (Handelstidningen) A revolutionary who not only threatened prevailing spiritual values, but even worse, the good taste.
