Strauss and Beethoven

Program

More about the concert

SINGING CLARINET AND FATE-BONDING

The scenically gifted star clarinetist David Orlowsky visits the Norrlandsoperan with his self-composed, hypnotic solo piece *Shadow Dancer*. A dramatic evening is in store, charged with emotion and daring virtuosity. As the icing on the cake, the program concludes with Beethoven’s timeless masterpiece, the Fifth Symphony—also known as the “Fate” Symphony.

German star clarinetist and composer David Orlowsky is coming to the Norrlandsoperan to perform his own composition, *Shadow Dancer*—a beautiful, expressive work with a strong minor-key tone. Orlowsky has described his playing style as an extension of his own voice—an approach that is clearly reflected in tonight’s solo concert, rich as it is in flowing, beautiful, and singable passages.

As an appetizer, Orlowsky presents Richard Strauss’s Mozart pastiche, the elegant Serenade in E-flat major. A piece as light as a cloud and as masterfully crafted as it is, written by the German opera master as early as 1881. In the same decade, just two years later, Richard Wagner—whose operas Strauss would go on to conduct so many times—passed away. And this leads us, notably, to the next piece.

Swedish composer and music professor B Tommy Andersson’s Death in Venice is a specially commissioned piece of music, produced by the Norrlandsoperan. Contrary to what one might think, the title does not allude to Thomas Mann’s famous novel of the same name or Visconti’s perhaps even more famous film adaptation of it. No, B Tommy Andersson has chosen to write music inspired by Richard Wagner’s death. On February 13, 1883, the famous composer breathed his last in Ca’ Vendramin Calergi, a beautiful 16th-century palace on the Grand Canal in Venice, following a particularly severe heart attack. His wife, Cosima, was inconsolable—it was after this tragedy that she took on the persona of the black-clad, eternally mourning widow as which she has been remembered by posterity.

*Death in Venice* was commissioned for the Norrlandsoperan’s opening concert during the 2014 European Capital of Culture year, when nine composers were each tasked with writing a commentary on one of the nine symphonies. B Tommy Andersson was assigned the fifth symphony, the “Fate” Symphony. “Thus does fate knock at the door,” as Beethoven himself described the opening bars of his famous symphony.

The evening also concludes in this way, with three short and one long “knock.” Beethoven composed and worked on the Fifth Symphony alongside several other projects during the first decade of the 19th century; the earliest sketches date all the way back to 1804. Perhaps the dramatic musical language can be explained by this very uncertain and dark period. Beethoven was in his thirties and had already begun to feel the effects of his worsening hearing loss. The continent was also plagued by recurring ravages of war due to the Napoleonic Wars, a circumstance that further clouded the introspective composer’s outlook. The Fifth Symphony finally premiered alongside the Sixth Symphony, a few days before Christmas 1808 in Vienna. Naturally, it was Beethoven himself who conducted. The famous premiere lasted four hours; the Fifth, of course, was played last, when most people had lost their enthusiasm. So there was certainly no immediate breakthrough. Nevertheless, the Fifth Symphony has come to be perhaps the world’s most famous classical piece. And in 2025, more than 200 years later, we’ll enjoy it once again, as if time had stood still. Beethoven’s spirit surely hovers over the hall, but at the podium we’ll find, instead, the Spanish conductor Jaume Santoja.