On 26 April Amalie Stalheim joins Emilia Hoving and the Turku Philharmonic for the Finnish premiere of Anders Hillborg’s Cello Concerto. The concerto was written for Nicolas Altstaedt and premiered in October 2020 with the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Fabien Gabel. Like Hillborg’s recent Viola Concerto for Lawrence Power and Piano Concerto No.2 for Emanuel Ax, the 27-minute work is cast in one unbroken movement. It is characterised by the intimacy of its scoring - much of the piece is written for strings alone, with dazzling virtuosity eschewed in favour of long, yearning cantabile lines, giving the work a soulful and reflective quality.
In September 2023 Stalheim gave the Icelandic premiere of the piece in Reykjavík with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra and Eva Ollikainen; in March 2021 she gave the Scandinavian premiere of the piece with James Gaffigan and the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra – part of Hillborg’s tenure as their Composer-in-Residence. In October 2022 she also performed an excerpt from the piece with Tobias Ringborg and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra at the Birgit Nilsson prize ceremony.
From November 2023 to January 2024 Stalheim and pianist David Huang gave an extensive Swedish tour of Anders Hillborg’s Duo for cello and piano (2013 rev. 2019). The 16-minute piece is Hillborg’s most substantial chamber work and calls for enormous virtuosity from its performers.
On 11 April Noord Nederlands Orkest and Elvind Gullberg Jensen give the Dutch premiere of Mantra–Elegy (2018) in Amsterdam, with further performances in Groningen and Utrecht; the 6 ½-minute work is a homage to Stravinsky, premiered by Vladimir Jurowski and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, expanding and reworking two famous chords from The Rite of Spring.