Name: Sports in Symphony
Start: 2026-09-12T15:00:00
Location: DR Koncerthuset

Yana Kleyn

The Danish National Concert Choir

Danish National Symphony Orchestra

The program for the gala concert in the Concert Hall has been carefully chosen. In Felix Mendelssohn’s overture The Hebrides, the orchestra and Kirill Petrenko enter a Nordic-colored world marked by mystery. Then follows Robert Schumann's highly romantic Piano Concerto with the Russian star pianist Polina Osetinskaya as soloist.

Léonie Sonnings Musikpris 2026

DR Koncerthuset

The Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra's journey through Mahler's symphonies with chief conductor Fabio Luisi has over the past decade created some of the most moving moments in the orchestra's history, and for this season opening, they will look together at Mahler from his most peaceful and clear-headed side.

Luisi & Mahler's 4.

Time stands still, and the whole world holds its breath as the great moments of sport unfold – both in reality, on the big screen and on the TV screen.

Sports in Symphony

We begin the evening with a concert where our eminent professional dancers, singers and musicians enchant us with swinging versions of all-time dance styles from foxtrot and quickstep to samba, waltz, tango and cha-cha-cha. We will hear numbers such as Unforgettable , Den allersidste dans , La cumparsita and Bésame Mucho .

Ballroom Dreams

Conductor Pietari Inkinen produced absolutely enchanting sounds from the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra when he conducted Mahler's Symphony No. 3 at short notice in 2024. Now he returns with a composer even closer to his heart: Wagner.

Inkinen & Wagner

Sibelius' music draws the audience into another world. In his violin concerto, the soloist is like a shaman, telling eternally valid Nordic stories, passed down through generations. We are proud that the soloist in this performance is the DR Symphony Orchestra's new concertmaster, Ludvig Gudim.

Samuel Lee & the Firebird

Lutosławski's spectacular  Concerto for Orchestra demands an orchestra of the absolute highest level – at once individual, full of character and harmoniously coherent. Yet this exuberant work on the part of the composer was not just a celebration of the orchestra's virtuosity, but also a defiant mark on Soviet-era Poland.

Hickox & Brahms

It is easy to be carried away by Camille Saint-Saëns' elegant and at the same time dramatic music – not least the composer's most breathtaking work, the Organ Symphony . With this work, Saint-Saëns set out to create a great symphony that would reignite the French symphonic tradition. He succeeded – and the composer was immediately nicknamed “the French Beethoven”.

Kavakos & Saint-Saëns

Grief plays a central role in this special concert, which opens with American composer Samuel Barber's  Adagio for strings – a work whose painful longing but also defiant spirit America has sought in its darkest moments, including after 9/11.

Kochanovsky & Shostakovich

For more than a thousand years, composers have set the Latin mass for the dead, the requiem, to music. But Verdi’s version, first performed in 1874, is unparalleled in its moving reflection on faith, doubt, grief, and redemption.

Luisi & Verdi's Requiem

The composer Arnold Schoenberg loved Brahms' Piano Quartet in G minor. But he intensely hated that the piano often drowned out the violin, viola and cello. The solution was that Schoenberg himself transformed the quartet from a chamber music jewel into a masterpiece for symphony orchestra in a complete rewriting of the score. A work that stands on its own two feet in a remarkable fusion of two musical geniuses and a live music experience filled with joy of life and enthusiasm, clearly borne of love.

Luisi & Brahms

There is music that can make us believe in miracles. Music that brings back memories from cinema halls and favorite seats at home in the TV room – and the very special atmosphere that arises when December knocks on the door and generations meet for shared experiences.