Autumn Concert with Flutist Ebba Wallén and Umeå Musiksällskap

Umeå Musiksällskap opens the 2026-2027 concert season at Norrlandsoperan with works by Ibert, Kuula, and Brahms. The soloist is Ebba Wallén, principal flutist of Norrlandsoperan's Symphony Orchestra, performing Jacques Ibert's flute concerto.

Ebba Wallén was born in Malmö in 1994 and holds two master's degrees: one in music from the Norwegian Academy of Music and Hochschule für Musik und Theater Munich (graduated 2021), and another in baroque music and baroque flute (traverso) from Hochschule für Katholische Kirchenmusik und Musikpädagogik in Regensburg (graduated 2023). She has performed with the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, Oslo Philharmonic, Malmö Symphony Orchestra, Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra, and Philharmonie Salzburg, and has received scholarships from the Royal Swedish Academy of Music in Stockholm and Villa Musica in Germany, as well as numerous prizes in international competitions.

The concert opens with Toivo Kuula's Suite for Orchestra No. 1, opus 9:1 - Landscape (Maisema), composed 1906-1909. Kuula (1883-1918) studied at the Music Institute in Helsinki and had Armas Järnefelt as his teacher when the work was written. He was shot in the head on Walpurgis Night 1918 and died on 18 May that year. This is followed by Jacques Ibert's Concerto for Flute and Orchestra, written in 1932 and premiered in 1934. Ibert (1890-1962) is regarded alongside Arthur Honegger and Darius Milhaud as one of France's most prominent composers of the twentieth century.

After the intermission, the evening concludes with Johannes Brahms' Symphony No. 2 in D major, opus 73, composed in the summer of 1877 - the same year Brahms described it in a letter to his publisher as the saddest and most melancholic work he had written.