Slobodeniouk: premieres from Sweden and Denmark

The Scandinavians Hans Abrahamsen and Karin Rehnqvist create unprecedented worlds. Dima Slobodeniouk conducts two premieres that we would have liked to have heard earlier.

Traveller in a strange land
You would expect a horn concerto from a composer with a history as a horn player. But Hans Abrahamsen's Horn Concerto is not a piece in which virtuosity and lyricism keep each other in perfect balance. The horn player initially relates to the orchestra like a traveller to a foreign country whose language he does not seem to understand. In the second movement, 'stormy and restless', you can hear how he tries to make contact with the orchestra in an unruly but increasingly insistent manner. This only succeeds in the third part, where the parties begin to communicate with each other 'plötzlich freundlich fließend'. The sophisticated transformation from playful absent-mindedness to intense concentration makes the piece incomparable. The soloist is Stefan Dohr, solo hornist of the Berliner Philharmoniker, who premiered the piece in January 2020 in Berlin.

The world after the catastrophe
Before that, Dima Slobodeniouk conducts the world premiere (also postponed due to the corona) of Karin Rehnqvist's Silent Earth for choir and orchestra on texts by Kerstin Perski, a vision of the world after the climate catastrophe, followed by the wonderful, almost unworldly Stabat Mater (1926) by the Pole Karol Szymanowski.

Read Thea Derks' interview with composer Karin Rehnqvist about Silent Earth:
'I simply had to address global-warming' (NL)
'In Silent Earth I simply had to address global-warning' (ENG)

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