Participants: University of Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra
Conductor: Simon Crawford-Phillips
Program
Arnold Schönberg: Verklärte Nacht (leader Øyvor Volle)
Igor Stravinskij: Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments, soloist Simon Crawford-Phillips
INTERMISSION
Arnold Schönberg's Verklärte Nacht (1899) combines late Romantic sound worlds with features that point to the composer's later development. Based on Richard Dehmel's poem, the music depicts a nocturnal journey through states such as guilt, love and reconciliation. The dense, chromatic tonal language can be said to pave the way for the dissolution of tonality found in Schönberg's later works, leading on to free atonality and eventually twelve-tone technique. Verklärte Nacht is, however, a coherent work with a clear poetic narrative character. Verklärte Nacht was originally written for string sextet, but in this concert the string orchestra version is performed.
Igor Stravinsky's Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments (1923–24, revised 1950) is considered a central work from his neoclassical period, composed for his own performances as a pianist, with three movements showcasing a sharp, contrapuntal interplay between solo piano and a large wind ensemble. The concerto marks a break from his earlier, so-called Russian style. Soloist: Simon Crawford-Phillips.
Claude Debussy's La Mer (1905) is a symphonic work in three movements drawing on light, movement and change in its reflection of the sea. With a rich orchestral colour palette and finely nuanced layers of sound, Debussy explores humanity's sensory impressions of nature's shifts and the sea's constant transformation in a way that has been compared to Impressionist painting. The music breaks with the logic of the Romantic symphony and is instead based on motivic transformation, rhythmic flexibility and a focus on timbre that became central to 20th-century orchestral music.
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