Shostakovich & Bartók

Solo Antics

Conductor: Tabita Berglund
Violin: Baiba Skride

Program
Anna Thorvaldsdottir: Archora | Norwegian Premiere
Dmitri Shostakovich: Violin Concerto No. 2
Béla Bartók: Concerto for Orchestra

About the Concert
The evening's duo, our own Tabita Berglund and Latvian Baiba Skride, are both highly sought after on the international concert stage, and this evening the program includes Shostakovich's virtuoso low-key Violin Concerto No. 2 and Bartok's somewhat iconic Concerto for Orchestra.

We open with Anna Thorvallsdottir's Archora from 2022, a work based on the beginning of the world, primordial energy, and a parallel omnipresent force – a world that is both familiar and foreign, static and in motion, nowhere and everywhere at the same time.

Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto was written for the legendary David Oistrakh and “belonged to him”, and for a long time few others dared to try their hand. But now a new generation has once again taken up this contemplative concerto, and Skride “makes it sound fresh and new”, according to Gramophone.

According to the composer himself, a concerto for orchestra is a gradual transition from the serious to the life-affirming. Bartók’s use of Hungarian folklore is also a foundation in this piece, where Bartók unites the concerto with the symphony and the orchestra’s various instrument groups are highlighted and allowed to shine in a concerto for, precisely, the orchestra.