Aarhus Symphony Orchestra plays Nielsen and Tchaikovsky

Aarhus Symphony Orchestra
Conductor: Dmitry Matvienko
Soloist: Mathias Vik Kjøller, clarinet

We’re delighted to welcome the Aarhus Symphony Orchestra to Tivoli Gardens with a programme of real depth and musical richness. If you’re drawn to large-scale emotions – including the darker, more searching kind – take your seat for this summer concert, as Chief Conductor Dmitry Matvienko sets the orchestra loose in a rich and varied programme that fully explores its expressive range.

The evening opens with music by the Danish composer Lil Lacy, a striking presence on the contemporary music scene. Despite her young age, she has already earned wide recognition for her sensuous orchestral writing and instinctive feel for colour and texture. In Di drømm dæ bringe vos sammel (The dreams that bring us together), she delves into her family roots on the island of Als, evoking childhood landscapes, local dialects and the dramatic history of Southern Jutland. The result is a work that celebrates humanity’s shared capacity to dream – and to imagine a better world together.

Next, the Aarhus Symphony Orchestra’s young principal clarinettist, Mathias Vik Kjøller, takes centre stage in Carl Nielsen’s Clarinet Concerto, Op. 57. This highly charged work is renowned for its intense dialogue between soloist and orchestra, and for the clarinet’s constant shifts between lyrical, inward-looking passages and wild, temperamental outbursts.

After the interval, the orchestra unfolds the full drama of Tchaikovsky’s magnificent Symphony No. 5. Built around its stark and haunting fate motif, the symphony explores the harsh hand of destiny in human life, yet it also contains one of the most meltingly beautiful instrumental solos ever written: the horn solo in the second movement, which has been known to soften hearts – and loosen fixtures – in Tivoli’s historic concert hall.