Anders Hillborg’s Cello Concerto is set to be choreographed by Mats Ek for A Cup of Coffee, a new work for the Royal Swedish Ballet which premieres on 7 February 2025. Ek’s choreography, which appears in a double-bill with Wayne McGregor’s Infra, explores the tensions between couples at different stages of their lives; it is designed by Marie-Louise Ekman and lit by Erik Berglund. It is the first time Hillborg’s music has been featured on the dance stage.
The solo cello part will be performed alternately by Kati Raitinen and Erik Wahlgren across the run of 14 performances, with the Royal Swedish Orchestra conducted by Nir Kabaretti. 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.
Ahead of A Cup of Coffee, Swedish audiences can hear Hillborg’s Cello Concerto from the Göteborgs Symfoniker with Amalie Stalheim and Emilia Hoving on 4 December 2024; Stalheim has previously given the Finnish, Icelandic, and Norwegian premieres of the piece. The concert follows the orchestra’s Hillborg tribute on 28 November conducted by Pekka Kuusisto, celebrating the composer’s 70th birthday, in which they perform King Tide, Through Lost Landscapes, Eleven Gates, Bach Materia, Kväll and The Strand Settings, with Ida Falk Winland as soprano soloist.