Camerata Nordica Octet – Gothenburg & Stockholm

Address

Götaplatsen 8,
412 56 Göteborg

Camerata Nordica Octet – Gothenburg & Stockholm

Description

The Camerata Nordica Octet is an ensemble made up of soloists from the orchestra's own ranks. After several international tours, including a debut concert at Carnegie Hall in New York, the octet now returns with its programme to the Swedish audience. The programme opens with two traditional pieces arranged for string octet by K.J. Ankarblom and Camerata Nordica: “Låt till far” and a polska in A minor after the famous Swedish fiddler Karl Lindblad. These works, which have their roots in the Scandinavian folk tradition, lay the foundation for an evening that moves between the intimately familiar and the boldly original. At the centre of the programme is the world premiere of the commissioned work *The Nordic Seasons*, a work in four movements that the violinist and composer Hanna Helgegren has written especially for Camerata Nordica. Inspired by the melody “Länge leve livet” and by the cycles of the Nordic landscape, the work spans autumn, winter, spring and summer, and is performed together with a film of Swedish landscape images directed by the British filmmaker Jack Walton. It is a work of rare emotional depth, capturing both the darkness of winter and the return of the light. The first half closes with Dmitri Shostakovich's “Two Pieces for String Octet”, Op. 11, which the Russian master composed as a teenager. These two pieces are angular, rhythmic and surprisingly modern, and give an insight into one of the great composers of the 1900s at the beginning of his career. After the interval, the evening culminates with Felix Mendelssohn's Octet in E flat major, Op. 20, one of the undisputed masterpieces of Western chamber music, performed from memory. The work was composed when Mendelssohn was only sixteen years old and remains unsurpassed in its brilliance, inventiveness and pure joy. From the grand opening movement to the delicate scherzo and the fugal finale, this is a work that never ceases to amaze. Programme: Trad.: Låt till far & Polska after Karl Lindblad, arr. K J Ankarblom Hanna Helgegren: The Nordic Seasons (world premiere) Shostakovich: Two Pieces for String Octet, Op. 11 Mendelssohn: Octet in E flat major, Op. 20