The Swedish RSO provides a flashy finish for Dvořák’s Prague

Daniel Harding

The Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra in the Rudolfinum

Veronika Eberle, Daniel Harding and the Swedish RSO

By Frank Kuznik, 27 September 2022

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“it was like the festival had suddenly plugged in and gone electric”

Reviewed at Rudolfinum: Dvořák Hall, Prague on 25 September 2022

Dvořák, The Noon Witch (Polednice), Symphonic poem, Op.108

Bartók, Violin Concerto no. 1, Sz 36

Matteis the Younger, Alia Fantasia in A minor

Dvořák, Symphony no. 7 in D minor, Op.70

Veronika Eberle, Violin

Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra

Daniel Harding, Conductor

Handel's Messiah streamed from the Baltic Sea Festival

Sandra Bowdler, 18th September

Reinhard Goebel conducts a perfectly fine, straight-down-the-line Messiah as Sweden re-engages with live audiences.

***11

A Baltic phoenix: Esa-Pekka Salonen brings Stockholm back to life

Tristan Labouret, 9th September

After hosting 18 months of concerts without audience, Berwaldhallen comes back to life with the Baltic Sea Festival and its phenomenal opening concert as intelligent as it is overwhelming.

*****

Elegant Mozart and monumental Schubert from Blomstedt in Stockholm

Cameron Kelsall, 20th November

The inexhaustible maestro shared the stage with Johan Dalene, an exciting violinist seven decades his junior.

*****

Mäkelä shapes Sibelius persuasively in Stockholm’s Berwaldhallen

Edward Sava-Segal, 13th November

Mäkelä brought out the harmonic inventiveness and the unexpected lyrical character of the music.

****1

A persuasively dark Don Giovanni from Swedish Radio

David Karlin, 14th June

Andrew Staples creates an austere, monochrome semi-staging that's strangely appropriate to the times; Peter Mattei and John Lundgren lead an excellent cast.

****1

Post-lockdown Sibelius from Daniel Harding and the Swedish RSO

Mark Valencia, 6th June

Although filled with beauty and sweetly played, the fragmentation of the symphony felt too disruptive.

***11

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Frank Kuznik

Frank Kuznik is the former Editor-in-Chief and Culture Editor of The Prague Post, Central Europe’s premier English-language weekly newspaper. He currently divides his time between Prague and his hometown in the US, Cleveland, where he covers northeast Ohio's dynamic classical music scene. In Prague he is an habitué of the Rudolfinum, National Theater, State Opera and other storied classical music venues, and an unabashed fan of Czech music.