Sæunn plays Shostakovich

Korea's Unsuk Chin has for years been one of the foremost contemporary composers in the world. In 2021 she received the coveted Léonie Sonning Prize, joining the ranks of previous winners such as Igor Stravinsky and Arvo Pärt. In 2019, the critic at The Guardian ranked her Cello Concerto among the best works written in the 21st century to date. Her subito con forza, written for the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth, was premiered at the 2021 Proms festival to widespread critical acclaim, including in The Times.

ISO Artist-in-Residence Sæunn Þorsteinsdóttir is one of Iceland's foremost cellists and has received deserved accolades for her passionate and evocative playing. An active international performer, she appears regularly in Carnegie Hall and played with the Los Angeles Philharmonic during the orchestra's Iceland festival. She has also been nominated for the Nordic Prize. On this programme she performs Shostakovich's Cello Concerto no. 1, written in 1959 and dedicated to the composer's good friend Mstislav Rostropovich, who premiered it in Leningrad that year.

Belarusian conductor Dmitry Matvienko won First Prize in the prestigious Malko Competition for Young Conductors in 2021. Originally trained as a choral conductor, he was also a member of the musicAeterna Choir before pursuing orchestral conducting studies in Moscow. This concert, his first with the ISO, concludes with Beethoven's Symphony no. 6, well known as the Pastoral Symphony. The work is in five movements, including the unforgettably beautiful second movement, Andante molto mosso, which bears the title Scene by the Brook.