29.9. FRIDAY SERIES 2

Transcription

1 29.9. FRIDAY SERIES 2 Helsinki Music Centre at Edward Gardner, conductor Marko Ylönen, cello Maurice Ravel: Le Tombeau de Couperin I Prélude (Vif) II Forlane (Allegretto) II Menuet (Allegro moderato) IV Rigaudon (Assez vif) Bernd Alois Zimmermann: Canto di Speranza 16 min 19 min INTERVAL 20 min Thomas Adès: Three Studies from Couperin I Les Amusemens II Les Tours de Passe-passe III L Âme-en-Peine Maurice Ravel: Daphnis & Chloé, Ballet Suite No. 2 I Lever du jour II Pantomime III Danse generale 12 min 16 min 1

2 The LATE-NIGHT CHAMBER MUSIC will begin in the main Concert Hall after an interval of about 10 minutes. Those attending are asked to take (unnumbered) seats in the stalls. Emma Vähälä, violin Taija Angervo, violin Jakob Dingstad, viola Tomas Nuñes-Carces, cello Maurice Ravel: String Quartet in F Major I Allegro moderato Tres doux II Assez vif Très rythmé III Tres lent IV Vif et agité 30 min Interval at about 19:50. The concert will end at about 20:40, the late-night chamber music at about 21:20. Broadcast live on Yle Radio 1 and online at yle.fi/areena. The first half of the concert will be shown on Yle Teema on and on Yle TV1 on , and the second half on Yle Teema on and Yle TV1 on

3 LE TOMBEAU DE COUPERIN His small physique and poor health prevented Maurice Ravel from fighting at the front when the First World War broke out in Back then, artists still rushed to sign up, and such was the case with Ravel. (Nowadays quite the opposite applies.) He ended up driving a truck, and did at times find himself close to the fighting. Amid all the turmoil, he took it upon himself to begin a French suite, a work for piano of traditional French Baroque dances. His intention was not, he said, to produce a new Marseillaise, or in any other respect to wallow in a wave of patriotism. His plans changed, however. He was in anything but good health, and he kept hearing news of friends who had fallen in battle. The more news of the death toll reached the home front, the more anti-war he became. To cap it all, his dear Aunt Marie fell ill and died in January 1917, and he became seriously depressed. He managed to complete the suite on which he was working, but by now, its character had changed. Le tombeau de Couperin is not heroic music far from it. It is a suite for piano in six movements with a title that does, of course, allude to the Baroque composer François Couperin. Back in the Baroque era, works titled Le tombeau were tributes to the dead. Ravel named each movement of his suite after a friend who had fallen in the war. Though Le tombeau de Couperin was a fine piano work, Ravel could hear the potential for a bigger palette of colours, and in 1919 he orchestrated four of the movements. They are not funeral music in the conventional sense; Ravel remained true to himself in his anguish and longing. The elegant orchestration makes the music more poignant than ever. The opening Prélude is playful and keeps moving. It soon swings up to a climax that is brought to a close by dreamy chords on the harp. Forlane hovers on the border between major and minor, like a young lady lost in admiration as she gazes into a mirror and sees only beautiful features and not even a hint of a wrinkle. The Minuet is certainly akin to the Baroque dance that preceded it by a couple of hundred years, but its flow is less regular. As in the Prélude, the oboe here plays a very prominent role. The Rigaudon was originally a hopping dance from Provence. Despite differing from the other movements in tempo and general mood, Ravel s brief whirl is a fitting end to the suite. DAPHNIS ET CHLOÉ Sergei Diaghilev founded his Ballets russes in They introduced Parisian audiences to Russian ballet and frequently commissioned new works. One of the first composers to whom Diaghilev turned was Maurice Ravel, who as early as 1909 received a commission to provide the music for a ballet, Daphnis et Chloé, to a scenario by Michel Fokine loosely based on the ancient Greek myth. Most of the score was ready in 1911 but rehearsals were already well underway when he was still composing the closing bacchanalia. 3

4 The reception was mixed and opinions varied. The overall structure was felt to be the biggest weakness: the choreography, stage designs and music did not hang together sufficiently. No one doubted the quality of the music. Ravel himself described the work as a choreographic symphony in three movements, because its structure is symphonic, and in concentrating on a few keys and themes it makes a homogeneous impression. The themes are not, however, treated symphonically; instead, Ravel assigns each character a theme of his or her own. The orchestration is Ravel at his very best, and countless composers have since copied its colourful devices. Ravel arranged two orchestral suites of music from the ballet. The plot is roughly as follows. Daphnis and Chloé are sweethearts. Young lads and lasses arrive bearing gifts to the forest nymphs. The women spot Daphnis and surround him in a seductive dance, much to Chloé s annoyance. But she in turn is soon approached by the men, led by the coarse cowherd Dorco. Daphnis is jealous and, gracefully dancing, vies with Dorco for Chloé s favour. Enter a band of pirates, who carry her off. Daphnis faints. Night falls and the nymphs come to life. They call upon Pan the god for assistance and, assisted by his satyrs, they rescue Chloé from the pirates clutches. Daphnis and Chloé are reunited and the ballet ends with a rowdy bacchanalia. CANTO DI SPERANZA When did the Big Bang take place, and where? The answer is here and now, because it is still going on in every corner of the universe. The idea is the same as the concept voiced by Bernd Alois Zimmermann of the spherical shape of time. Intervals (the distance between two notes), he said, have both linear and vertical dimensions, and this distance is only perceived in time; time and interval are thus interwoven. Zimmermann defined the outer limits of his own spherical time as taking in everything he could see in history, from the Middle Ages right up to post-wwii jazz and pop. His musical philosophy was crystallised in a single word: pluralism. Zimmermann put the finishing touches to Canto di Speranza in 1957, at the Villa Massimo in Rome where he was artist in residence. Subtitled Cantata for Cello and Small Orchestra, it really is a sort of song. Speranza is Italian and means hope, and in the 1950s, Zimmermann was undoubtedly optimistic about the expressive potential of serial music. In one movement, Canto di Speranza begins and ends quietly. Unlike most of the golden age Darmstadt Modernists, Zimmermann gives his Song of Hope a recognisable overall form. This naturally requires the presence of past, present and future spherical time. Cellists like playing the relatively slight Canto di Speranza because of its technical virtuosity and singing inner beauty. It is therefore a stimulating and rewarding challenge for any cellist. 4

5 A NATIONAL ICON FOLLOWING IN COUPERIN S FOOTSTEPS Born in 1971, Thomas Adès was just what British musical circles had been crying out for: a talented young composer, pianist and conductor all in one. It seemed he could do nothing wrong, and still come up with some pleasant surprises. Living Toys and Asyla, for example, two works of the 1970s, immediately became established in the repertoire, and from the chamber opera Powder Her Face of 1995 onwards there was no looking back. The Three Studies from Couperin for chamber orchestra is an out-and-out Baroque pastiche. True, there is nothing unusual these days about Baroqueoriented ensembles commissioning works from living composers, but the composers often tend to stick to present-day harmonies and mainly borrow timbres and performance techniques from the Baroque. But not Adès: he uses virtuoso pieces for the harpsichord (or other keyboard instruments) composed by François Couperin ( ) and cleverly adapts them for a small orchestra consisting of modern woodwinds and brass, a few percussions and two string sections. The result is Three Studies from Couperin (2006) commissioned by the Basel Chamber Orchestra. Adès was the conductor at the premiere. The opening Les Amusemens is a moment of soft, muted pleasure. Les Tours de Passe-passe (Sleights of Hand) neatly distributes motifs among the instrumental sections in a sunny mood, and L Âme-en-Peine (The Soul in Pain) brings the set to its conclusion in a minor key. Programme notes by Osmo Tapio Räihälä translated (abridged) by Susan Sinisalo EDWARD GARDNER Born in Gloucester, England, Edward Gardner was a chorister until he was over 20 until, inspired by his experiences of opera, he began developing an interest in conducting. He studied at Cambridge University and the Royal Academy of Music and on graduation served as assistant conductor to Mark Elder at the Hallé Orchestra. For eight years until 2015, Edward Gardner was Music Director of English National Opera, after which he took up his present post as Chief Conductor of the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra. He makes regular guest appearances at the New York Metropolitan, Chicago s Lyric Opera, La Scala and Covent Garden. The many orchestras he has conducted have included the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago and Boston Symphonies, the Leipzig Gewandhaus and Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestras. He conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra in the Last Night of the Proms, televised worldwide, in Edward Gardner is also renowned for his work with young people at the Juilliard School in New York and 5

6 he conducts the UK s National Youth Orchestra, the Barbican Youth Orchestra and the youth orchestra of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. In 2002, he founded a Hallé Youth Orchestra in Manchester, UK. Edward Gardner s most recent disc is of music by Janáček, Mendelssohn, Lutosławski and Britten, made with English National Opera. Recipient of the Royal Philharmonic Society Award for Best Conductor in 2008 and the Olivier award for Outstanding Achievement in Opera in 2009, Edward Gardner was awarded an OBE for his Services to Music in the Queen s Birthday Honours in June MARKO YLÖNEN Winner of the New York City-based Concert Artist Guild Competition, of the second prize in Nordic cello competitions and of finalist places in the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow and the Turku Competition in Finland, Marko Ylönen is one of the most celebrated Finnish cellists and chamber musicians. He has been the soloist with such prestigious ensembles as the Camerata Salzburg, the English and Prague Chamber Orchestras, and has held solo recitals at venues ranging from Carnegie Hall, New York and the Amsterdam Concertgebouw. He has been principal cellist in the Tapiola Sinfonietta and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, was Artistic Director of the Korsholm Music Festival in 2003, 2008 and , and of the LuostoClassic event in Finnish Lapland Marko Ylönen is a member of various Finnish chamber ensembles, including the New Helsinki Quartet, and has collaborated with cellists Natalia Gutman and Gary Hoffman, violinist Gerhard Schulz, pianist Leif Ove Andsnes and others. He is Professor of chamber music at the Sibelius Academy and has held masterclasses in Australia, Egypt, the United States and many countries in Europe. In addition to classical repertoire, Ylönen performs contemporary music and has premiered many Finnish compositions. His discography, on the Ondine, BIS and Finlandia labels, covers both new concertos and traditional works. Among his most recent releases are a disc containing two short cello pieces by Sibelius with the Lahti Symphony Orchestra and Osmo Vänskä, the Vasks cello concerto with the Tampere Philharmonic under John Storgårds, and the Kokkonen cello concerto with the FRSO and Sakari Oramo. 6

7 THE FINNISH RADIO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA The Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra (FRSO) is the orchestra of the Finnish Broadcasting Company (Yle). Its mission is to produce and promote Finnish musical culture and its Chief Conductor as of autumn 2013 has been Hannu Lintu. His predecessors as Chief Conductor were Toivo Haapanen, Nils- Eric Fougstedt, Paavo Berglund, Okko Kamu, Leif Segerstam, Jukka-Pekka Saraste and Sakari Oramo. The FRSO celebrates its 90th anniversary in the 2017/2018 season, for the Radio Orchestra of ten players made its first appearance on September 1, 1927, at the Aleksanterinkatu 46 studio in Helsinki. It began giving public concerts a few years later and grew to symphony orchestra strength in the 1960s, during Paavo Berglund s term as Chief Conductor. In addition to the great Classical- Romantic masterpieces, the latest contemporary music is a major item in the repertoire of the FRSO, which each year premieres a number of Yle commissions. Another of the orchestra s tasks is to record all Finnish orchestral music for the Yle archive. During the 2017/2018 season, the FRSO will premiere six Finnish works commissioned by Yle. The programme will also include concert performances of three operas, the FRSO s first festival of its own and major 20th-century violin concertos. The FRSO has recorded works by Mahler, Ligeti, Sibelius, Hakola, Lindberg, Saariaho, Sallinen, Kaipainen, Kokkonen and others, and the debut disc of the opera Aslak Hetta by Armas Launis. Its discs have reaped some prestigious distinctions, such as the BBC Music Magazine Award, the Académie Charles Cros Award and a MIDEM Classical Award. Its disc of Sibelius s Lemminkäinen and Pohjola s Daughter was Gramophone magazine s Critic s Choice in December 2015 and brought the FRSO and Hannu Lintu a Finnish Emma award in the Classical Album category. Music by Sibelius, Prokofiev, Lindberg, Bartók and others will be recorded during the 2017/2018 season. The FRSO regularly tours to all parts of the world. During the 2017/2018 season its schedule will include a European tour under Hannu Lintu. The home channel of the FRSO is Yle Radio 1, which broadcasts all the FRSO concerts, usually live, both in Finland and abroad. Its concerts can also be heard and watched with excellent live stream quality in the web (yle.fi/areena). 7