arrow

HERBERT BLOMSTEDT & JOHAN DALENE

The P2 Classical Artist meets the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra’s Conductor Laureate in Mozart’s colourful fifth violin concerto: an acclaimed composer’s youthful work performed by an acclaimed young violinist. Additionally, Blomstedt interprets Franz Schubert’s Great C major symphony, a symphonic masterpiece to which he also has an important, personal connection.

The concert will be broadcasted on Swedish Radio P2 and Berwaldhallen Play November 20, 7 pm.


SWEDISH RADIO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA dot 2020/2021
Print

Participants

 

&

The Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra is a multiple-award-winning ensemble renowned for its high artistic standard and stylistic breadth, as well as collaborations with the world’s finest composers, conductors, and soloists. It regularly tours all over Europe and the world and has an extensive and acclaimed recording catalogue.

Daniel Harding has been Music Director of the SRSO since 2007, and since 2019 also its Artistic Director. His tenure will last throughout the 2024/2025 season. Two of the orchestra’s former chief conductors, Herbert Blomstedt and Esa-Pekka Salonen, have since been named Conductors Laureate, and continue to perform regularly with the orchestra.

The Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra performs at Berwaldhallen, concert hall of the Swedish Radio, and is a cornerstone of Swedish public service broadcasting. Its concerts are heard weekly on the Swedish classical radio P2 and regularly on national public television SVT. Several concerts are also streamed on-demand on Berwaldhallen Play and broadcast globally through the EBU.

22-year-old Swedish-Norwegian violinist Johan Dalene is already making an impact on the international scene, performing with leading orchestras and in celebrated recital halls both at home and abroad. His ability to “make his Stradivarius sing like a master” (Le Monde), coupled with his refreshingly honest musicality and engagement with musicians and audiences alike, has won him countless admirers. This talent was heralded most recently as winner of the Norwegian Soloist Prize and First Prize at the prestigious 2019 Carl Nielsen Competition.

Dalene was recently selected as a European Concert Hall Organisation (ECHO) Rising Star, and during the 2021-22 season, performed recitals in some of Europe’s most prestigious concert halls, while also engaging in Education, Learning and Participation work with diverse communities in cities across the ECHO network. Johan was also a BBC New Generation Artist from 2019-22 during which time he performed recitals, chamber music and concerti with the BBC orchestras, all broadcast on BBC Radio 3.

Dalene began playing the violin at the age of four and made his professional concerto debut three years later. In Summer 2016, he was student-in-residence at Switzerland’s Verbier Festival (where he made his performance debut in 2021) and in 2018 was accepted on to the Norwegian Crescendo programme, where he worked closely with mentors Janine Jansen, Leif Ove Andsnes and Gidon Kremer. Andsnes subsequently invited Johan to play at the Rosendal Chamber Music Festival and they performed together again in May 2019 at the Bergen International Festival.  In 2019 he joined Janine Jansen and other members of the Crescendo Programme for a performance at the Wigmore Hall in London, and at the International Chamber Music Festival in Utrecht. In April 2020, during lockdown in Sweden, Johan performed Bach’s Concerto for 2 Violins with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, alongside Janine Jansen. During the 2020/21 season, he was Artist in Residence with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, performing concerti, recitals, and chamber music together with members of the orchestra.

Dalene studies with Per Enoksson, Professor at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, as well as with Janine Jansen, and has also participated in masterclasses with a number of distinguished teachers, including Dora Schwarzberg, Pamela Frank, Gerhard Schulz, and Henning Kraggerud. He has been awarded various scholarships and prizes, notably from the Royal Swedish Academy of Music, The Anders Wall Giresta Scholarship, Queen Ingrid’s Honorary Scholarship, The Håkan Mogren Foundation Prize, Equinor Classical Music Award, Sixten Gemzéus Stora Musikstipendium, The G.T. Bäckmans Kulturstipendium, Norrköping Kommuns Kulturstipendium and Rolf Wirténs Kulturpris.

Johan Dalene plays a Stradivarius violin from 1736, generously on loan from the Anders Sveaas’ Charitable Foundation.

Programme

Approximate timings

Less than two minutes of music. Almost nothing.
A motif that is allowed to develop in time.
A flower bud already showing what it wants.

This becomes a fanfare for Maestro Herbert Blomstedt: To my generation truly inspiring, someone who gave us such magnificent experiences, who opened our generation’s ears to the new, together with the Classical and Romantic repertoire.

And inspiring new generations is something Herbert Blomstedt has continued to do.
My heartfelt thank you.

Text: Daniel Börtz

Approximate duration: 2 hours