Video streamed event and on demand: Strauss Don Juan

Canadian violinist James Ehnes has been called the “Jascha Heifetz of our time.” With his unerring musicality and lightning-fast technique, he is a continuously in-demand soloist on the world’s major concert stages, and his recordings have won multiple Grammy and Gramophone Awards. At this concert, we hear him in Edward Elgar’s Violin Concerto, which was an immediate success after the world premiere in 1910. “It is good! Incredibly emotional! Too emotional, but I love it!” he said of his violin concerto. 

Richard Strauss was a great admirer of Richard Wagner. Influenced by Wagner, Strauss abandoned the abstract, classical symphonies and sonatas of his youth and began to compose great tone poems inspired by literature and nature instead. In 1889, he completed the symphonic poem Don Juan, based on the poem by Nikolaus Lenaus, which is in turn based on the Spanish legend of Don Juan.

In addition, we hear music by American composer Paola Prestini for the first time at Konserthuset. Prestini, born in 1975, works with everything from poets and filmmakers to researchers and has become known for her innovative ideas and for crossing the boundaries of genre and uniting discrete disciplines. We hear one of her early works here: Barcarola, from 1996.

Italian Speranza Scappucci conducts this concert. She is a frequent guest at the world’s major opera houses, for example in Vienna, Rome, ​​Zürich, Los Angeles and New York – and now it is time for her debut with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra.