16 JANUARY FRIDAY SERIES 6

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1 16 JANUARY FRIDAY SERIES 6 Helsinki Music Centre at 19 Hannu Lintu, conductorboris Berezovsky, piano Maurice Ravel: Piano Concerto in G I Allegramente II Adagio assai III Presto 22 min INTERVAL 20 min Gustav Mahler: Symphony No. 5 in C-Sharp Minor I Trauermarsch II Stürmisch bewegt, mit grösster Vehemenz III Scherzo IV Adagietto V Rondo Finale 70 min Interval at about The concert ends at about Broadcast live on Yle Radio 1 and the internet (yle.fi/rso). PLEASE MAKE SURE THAT YOUR MOBILE PHONE IS SWITCHED OFF! Photographing, video and sound recording are prohibited during the concert. 1

2 MAURICE RAVEL ( ): PIANO CONCERTO IN G Ravel completed the second of his two piano concertos, that in G, in To a great extent he had composed the two side-by-side. He was working on the G-major one when Paul Wittgenstein commissioned the concerto for the left hand. Ravel was moved to compose this curiosity first, and only then did he finish off the G-major. Being an incurable perfectionist, Ravel was a slow composer. He grumbled about this on a number of occasions and said he envied the really great composers who wrote with ease and produced many works. The G-major concerto was again a hard nut for him to crack, though it is impossible to imagine anything checking the flow of his invention. He probably just spent an inordinate amount of time and energy polishing the details to perfection, note for note and bar by bar. The soloist at the premiere was Marguerite Long, who would become one of the most brilliant and most colourful Ravel specialists. She gave the concerto its first performance in January 1932 with the Orchestre Lamoureux conducted by Ravel, and followed it with a tightscheduled tour of twenty cities. In each, the concerto was a tremendous success and it immediately won lasting world renown. The concerto s most unusual feature is the relative lengths of the movements. Both the quick ones are short, the finale even passing in an astonishing flash. By contrast, the idyllic middle one is not in a hurry to go anywhere. Instead, Ravel lets the gloriously peaceful music flow endlessly onwards, unimpeded. The touchingly sustained intimacy nevertheless never lets up, so that this movement, too, gives an impression of being succinct and of giving all trivialities a wide berth. The first movement offsets a perky, motoric texture with calmer material and infinitely charming echoes of blues. The structures are as clear as can be, and the listener has no difficulty following the sudden twists, without any fear of falling by the wayside. The slow movement begins with a sustained melody on the piano alone. As his model for this, Ravel said he took the main theme of the slow movement of Mozart s Clarinet Quintet, keeping closely to it, bar for bar. The relationship is, however, more of a spiritual one, so it is pointless trying to spot any melodic similarities. The landscape acquires more colours when the orchestra enters, but the mood remains unbroken. The finale is a jubilant toccata akin to a perpetuum mobile, and short. It is in fact so short that at one time it became the custom to play it again at concerts as an encore, but this is seldom done these days. 2

3 GUSTAV MAHLER ( ): SYMPHONY NO. 5 Mahler composed his fifth symphony in and conducted its premiere in Cologne in His busy conducting schedule left him little time for composing except in the summer, and as the long opera seasons eased off, he acquired a quite manic zest for work. He rented a house on Lake Wörther and turned one of the sheds into a place where he could compose round the clock without being disturbed. The symphony is in five movements but falls into three main sections, the first and third each comprising two movements with an independent scherzo in between. The first begins with a solemn Funeral March. It was prompted by a childhood memory of a barracks fanfare and sounds; the gloomy tread of the funeral march is soon tinged with other emotions. The sweeping movement does, however, cover life s whole spectrum in true Mahlerian style. My symphonies represent the contents of my entire life; I have written into them all my experience and all my suffering, he proclaimed. The second section (i.e. the third movement) is one of the biggest and most peculiar scherzos ever composed. Saying that it mainly consists of two dances in triple time, a Ländler and a waltz, does not even begin to describe it. For it is a staggering fantasia, a nervy, thematically brilliant and crazy. As a piece of counterpoint alone it is a magnificent feat, but it enjoys special status by virtue of its taut but rewarding psychological treatment. The third section begins with the wonderful Adagietta also known as a separate concert number, an enjoyable respite scored for strings and harp. Idyllic yet full of yearning, it is followed by a relatively cheerful, lusty finale. When it begins, the pieces of the jigsaw have only just been scattered on the floor: motifs leap up and shoot off here and there. But before long, the picture starts to take shape, and the dominant impression is one of forging ahead. Once again Mahler nevertheless twists things round and the question remains: was it actually real, and if it was, what was it? Jouni Kaipainen (abridged) HANNU LINTU Hannu Lintu took over as Chief Conductor of the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra in August Formerly Artistic Director of the Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra and Chief Conductor of the Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra, he has also been Principal Guest Conductor of the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra in Dublin. He works regularly with the Avanti! Chamber Orchestra and was Artistic Director of its Summer Sounds festival in In addition to conducting the leading Finnish orchestras, Maestro Lintu has made guest appearances with 3

4 the Radio Orchestras in Berlin, Paris, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Amsterdam and Madrid, with a number of orchestras in North and South America (such as the Toronto, Houston, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh and St. Louis Symphony Orchestras, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl), in Asia (Seoul, Tokyo, Kuala Lumpur and Hong Kong) and Australia (the Sydney and Melbourne Symphony Orchestras and others). During the 2012/2013 season he made his debut with such orchestras as the London Philharmonic, the Minnesota Orchestra and the BBC Scottish Symphony, and this season he takes up re-invitations to conduct the Stockholm and Gothenburg Symphonies, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin (DSO), the Toronto Symphony and other orchestras. Hannu Lintu studied the piano and cello first at the Turku Conservatory in his native Finland and later the Sibelius Academy, where he also attended the conducting class taught by Jorma Panula, Atso Almila, Eri Klas and Ilja Musin. He has further been tutored by, among others, Myung Whun Chung at the Music Academy Siena. In 1994 he was the winner of the Nordic Conducting Competition Discs by Hannu Lintu have been released on the Ondine, Alba, Naxos, Ricordi, Claves, Hyperion and Danacord labels. Many of the discs featuring him as the conductor have won awards both at home and abroad, and his premiere recording of the opera The Mine by Einojuhani Rautavaara was nominated for a Grammy. BORIS BEREZOVSKY Boris Berezovsky has established a reputation both as a great virtuoso and as a musician of unique sensitivity. Born in Moscow, he studied at the Moscow Conservatory with Eliso Virsaladze. Subsequent to his London debut at the Wigmore Hall in 1988, The Times described him as an artist of exceptional promise, a player of dazzling virtuosity and formidable power. Two years later, he won the Gold Medal at the 1990 International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. Boris Berezovsky is regularly invited by such prominent orchestras as the Berlin, Munich and New York Philharmonic Orchestras, the Staatskapelle Dresden, the Mariinsky Orchestra, and the London Philharmonia. He has given recitals at such prestigious venues as the Berlin Philharmonie, the Vienna Konzerthaus, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw and the Salle Pleyel in Paris and will shortly be appearing in solo recitals at the Royal Festival Hall in London, the Champs-Elysées Theatre in Paris and the Suntory hall in Tokyo. Berezovsky has recorded works by Chopin, Liszt, Schumann, Medtner and others. His recording of the Rachmaninoff sonatas won him the German Schallplattenkritik award and his Chopin/Godowsky disc a BBC Music Magazine award. His recording partners in chamber repertoire have included Vadim Repin and the Borodin String Quartet. Boris Berezovsky is Artistic Director of the Pianoscope Beauvais Festival. 4

5 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 is Hannu Lintu. The FRSO has two Honorary Conductors: Jukka-Pekka Saraste and Sakari Oramo. The Radio Orchestra of ten players founded in 1927 grew to symphony orchestra strength in the 1960s. Hannu Lintu was preceded as Chief Conductor by Toivo Haapanen, Nils-Eric Fougstedt, Paavo Berglund, Okko Kamu, Leif Segerstam, Jukka-Pekka Saraste and most recently Sakari Oramo. 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 2014/2015 season it will premiere four Finnish works commissioned by Yle. The programme will also include colourful orchestral poems by Richard Strauss, symphonies by Shostakovich and Haydn s great The Creation. The orchestra s distinguished guests will include conductors Leonard Slatkin, Kent Nagano, Herbert Blomstedt and Esa- Pekka Salonen, soprano Karita Mattila, violist Tabea Zimmermann and pianist Olli Mustonen. The FRSO has recorded works by Ligeti, Eötvös, Nielsen, 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 and the Académie Charles Cros Award. The disc of the Sibelius and Lindberg violin concertos was Gramophone magazine s Editor s Choice in February The FRSO regularly tours to all parts of the world. One of the many highlights of the 2013/2014 season was a criticallyacclaimed concert conducted by Hannu Lintu at the Vienna Musikverein during a tour of Central Europe. During the 2014/2015 season the orchestra, under the baton of Hannu Lintu, will appear in Stockholm and tour Finland. It will also visit the EBU Festival in Bucharest with Joshua Weilerstein as its conductor. The home channel of the FRSO is Yle Radio 1, which broadcasts all its concerts, usually live, both in Finland and abroad. Its concerts can also be heard and watched with excellent live stream quality on the FRSO website (yle.fi/rso), and the majority of them are televised live on the Yle Teema channel. 5