Nordic spirit at the Prague Spring: Göteborgs Symfoniker
“While the Viennese ate in luxurious restaurants surrounded by culture, we were in the woods, making fires and roasting sausages. That’s why we Finns have a slightly different perspective on things, which is also interesting for the audience,” one of today’s most watched artists, Santtu-Matias Rouvali, humorously commented on the remarkable achievements of Finnish conductors. Originally a percussionist, who has also tasted jazz and rock music in addition to classical music, he has been leading the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra (Göteborgs Symfoniker) since 2017. The Orchestra will make its debut at Prague Spring on 23 May, thus fulfilling one of the festival’s dramaturgical goals: to introduce the Czech audience to hitherto unknown world ensembles of the highest level.
The sound of the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra was shaped by personalities such as Neeme Järvi, Gustavo Dudamel and Kent Nagano. At the Prague Spring Festival the Göteborgs Symfoniker will perform the last of the Swedish symphonic poems Håkon Jarl by Bedřich Smetana, who worked in Gothenburg from 1856 to 1861 and found his mysterious muse and friend Fjörda Benecke there. In addition, one of the most important works of the 20th century – Béla Bartók’s spectacular Concerto for Orchestra and Fryderyk Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1 will be performed. The latter will be played by one of the most sought-after Chopin interpreters of our time, Jan Lisiecki, whose recording of the famous Etudes was listed by the British magazine Gramophone among the fifty best Chopin albums in history. Lisiecki, who signed an exclusive contract with Deutsche Grammophon at the age of 15, has been a guest of the BBC Proms three times and has appeared at the Salzburg Festival and with the New York and Berlin Philharmonics. The concert of the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, which will celebrate its one hundred and twenty years of existence in 2025, led by the “magician with a wand”, as Santtu-Matias Rouvali is sometimes called, is one of the dark horses of the Prague Spring Festival 2025.
