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FRIDAY SERIES 5 Hannu Lintu, Conductor Li-Wei Qin, Cello

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FRIDAY SERIES 5 Hannu Lintu, Conductor Li-Wei Qin, Cello 9.11. FRIDAY SERIES 5 Helsinki Music Centre at 19:00 Hannu Lintu, conductor Li-Wei Qin, cello Witold Lutosławski: Symphony No. 2 30 min Hesitant Direct INTERVAL 20 min Pyotr Tchaikovsky: Variations on a Rococo Theme, 18 min Op. 33 Thema. Moderato assai quasi Andante–Moderato semplice Var. I. Tempo della Thema Var. II. Tempo della Thema Var. III. Andante sostenuto Var. V. Andante grazioso Var. V. Allegro moderato Var. VI. Andante. Var. VII e Coda. Allegro vivo Sergei Prokofiev (arr. Palmer): War and Peace, 26 min symphonic suite I The Ball 1. Fanfare and Polonaise (Maestoso e brioso) 2. Waltz (Allegro ma non troppo) 3. Mazurka (Animato) II Intermezzo – May Night (Andante assai) III Finale 1. Snowstorm (Tempestoso) 2. Battle (Allegro) 3. Victory (Allegro fastoso – Andante maestoso) 1 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. Petri Aarnio, violin Li-Wei Qin, cello Ossi Tanner, piano Pyotr Tchaikovsky: Piano Trio A Minor Op. 50 47 min 1. Pezzo elegiaco 2. Tema con variazioni Interval at about 19:40. The concert will end at about 21:00, the late-night chamber music at about 22:00. Broadcast live on Yle Radio 1 and Yle Areena and later on Yle Teema on 30.12. with a repeat on Yle TV 1 on 5.1. 2 WITOLD LUTOSŁAWSKI of movements. The two movements of roughly the same size achieve bal- (1913–1994): ance but not symmetry, since they dif- SYMPHONY NO. 2 fer completely in character and role. More important than themes are tex- “In my youth, when I composed my first tures and events. The symphony was, works, I was surrounded by a world of for Lutosławski, a “closed form” permit- ‘violated tonality’. In other words, ton- ting sustained development. For the al music with false notes, such as ear- listener, it is a chance to examine the ly Hindemith or some of the works of processes and the entity that emerg- Les Six. That is what I found to have no es from little components. The listen- future...alien to my nature.... I tried to er can, he said, follow it as an abstract create order in my first compositions,” play but one with real people and char- said Witold Lutosławski in the 1920s. acters. What he meant was, however, not ton- The first movement is marked al organisation but logic, clear struc- Hesitant and paves the way for the sec- ture and the elimination of all but the ond, Direct. Supplementing and com- essentials. ‘Order’ also embraced the plementing the first, the second starts aleatory or randomness he developed off in the double bass, while echoes from the 1960s onwards. This was his can still be heard of a bassoon draw- way of combating the excessive control ing its last breaths. The first movement of postwar modernism by introducing is one of denser, tenser textures rath- an element that stressed free, collec- er than combinations of instruments. tive creativity. These finally lead to an aleatoric fortis- His string quartet of 1964 estab- simo climax that disperses and fades lished the two-movement format that into silence in an epilogue. would serve as a model for many of his large-scale works. The first of these was his second symphony, commissioned PYOTR TCHAIKOVSKY by the Norddeutscher Rundfunk in (1840–1893): Hamburg. Only the second movement was ready by the deadline and it was VARIATIONS ON A premiered by that orchestra with Pierre ROCOCO THEME, Boulez conducting in 1966. The first OP. 33 movement followed a year later, and Lutosławski conducted the whole sym- For Pyotr Tchaikovsky, the 18th centu- phony in Katowice in 1967. ry represented an imaginary world of The symphony was not a favourite snug serenity, beauty and harmony, a genre with modernist composers, but little like childhood memories. These Lutosławski’s second does not repre- idealised visions dominate the Rococo sent tradition as a “thematic biography” Variations for cello and orchestra he any more than it does as a standard set wrote in 1876. It was unofficially com- 3 missioned by Wilhelm Fitzenhagen, time. The quick final variation lets vir- himself a cellist and the advisor on the tuosity have its head. difficult virtuoso passages. He also ed- ited the version nowadays most often SERGEI PROKOFIEV performed today, changing the order (1891–1953): WAR AND of the variations and omitting one al- together. PEACE, SYMPHONIC Tchaikovsky had mostly used vari- SUITE (ARR. PALMER) ation form in his little drawing-room pieces, and here again his aim was not In 1936, Sergei Prokofiev tried to ease to dazzle his audience by being ex- his return to the Soviet Union with tra-inventive; above all, he wanted to some compositions in which his mod- avoid the pitfalls of concerto or fan- ern style would be in tune with the ar- tasia form in a sort of pastiche. The tistic strivings of the new Soviet soci- Rococo theme and style serve mainly ety. to create the mood, an 18th-century Try as he might, his Russian Overture portrait of the times in a graceful, aris- (1936), Cantata for the 20th Anniversary tocratic atmosphere. of the October Revolution (1937), op- The orchestration is delightfully eco- era Semyon Kotko (1939), Zdrvitsa (also nomical. A good example here is the known as Hail to Stalin, 1939), Ballad of elegant introduction: the dialogue be- an Unknown Boy (1943), Ivan the Terrible tween strings and woodwinds, the piz- (1945) for the film directed by Sergei zicato transition to a solo French horn, Eisenstein, and Ode to the End of the and the theme prettily stated by the War (1945) did not meet with the ap- cello with chivalrous cadences. The proval of the Soviet regime. simple theme with its four-bar struc- Despite their idealistic and histori- ture is Tchaikovsky’s own but has his- cal orientation, these works were mu- torical associations. sically ambitious, and with their chal- The seven variations could be de- lenging harmonies and unconventional scribed as poetic portraits, some line-ups, this was their biggest ‘fault’. weightier than the others. The first two Prokofiev was not a member of the decorate the theme with a coquettish Communist Party, and the politically air. The slow movement wraps the lis- correct Soviet line wanted something a tener in a softer-than-soft romantic lot more conventional for its great oc- blanket, now and then with minuet-like casions. elegance. The opera War and Peace begun as The fifth variation is left to the or- WWII raged in 1941 also raised a few chestra; the soloist just embroiders as eyebrows in the Soviet elite. In theory, it approaches a little cadenza. The sixth, Leo Tolstoy’s classic novel, the descrip- in a minor key, has something of the tion of Napoleon’s disastrous Russian poetic melancholy of Eugene Onegin on campaign, was the perfect subject for which Tchaikovsky was working at the a nation at war. In practice, however, 4 Tolstoy’s tale was full of embarrassing scribed in the novel. Instead, it focuses philosophising on the madness of war on the clash between the Russian par- and sacrifice, and of lofty aristocratic tisans and the French in which the nov- and down-to-earth Christian ideals. el’s main character, Pierre Bezukhov, By 1952, Prokofiev had produced five manages to escape. versions of War and Peace, but he nev- Victory, the hymn that ends the op- er saw any of them performed (apart era, is a moderate summation of the from a concert version in 1944). Nor patriotic sentiments expressed. After did he ever arrange a suite of music hearing about all the heroic deeds and from it, as he had done for Semyon giant sacrifices, it is good to stop and Kotko in 1941 and Duenna (Betrothal in a reflect on Tolstoy’s modern philosophy Monastery) in 1950. This would be done of history: “Man lives consciously for by Christopher Palmer (1946–1995), an himself, but serves as an unconscious English composer specialising in con- instrument for the achievement of his- cert arrangements of film scores. torical, universally human goals.” The first movement of Palmer’s suite is the second scene in the opera, Programme notes by Antti Häyrynen The Ball – glittering and blissfully un- translated (abridged) by Susan Sinisalo aware of what would follow when war broke out. It begins with a Fanfare and Polonaise that herald in the New Year 1812 in St. Petersburg. The Waltz is more intimate. It portrays HANNU LINTU the encounter of Andrei Bolgonsky and the young Natasha Rostova, and Hannu Lintu has been Chief Conductor already hints at the tragedy that lies of the Finnish Radio Symphony ahead. Orchestra since August 2013. During The scene ends with a brisk Mazurka, the 2018/2019 season, his sched- the ironic overtones of which may al- ule will include appearances with the lude to the superficial lifestyle of the Baltimore, St Louis and Cincinnati St. Petersburg nobility. Symphony Orchestras, the New Japan May Night, chosen by Palmer as an Philharmonic, the Singapore Symphony, Intermezzo, is from the opera’s poet- the NDR Symphony Hamburg and oth- ically-charged opening scene pictur- er orchestras. Further highlights of the ing peaceful times and serving as a season will include his debut with the reminder of Nature’s power of renew- Boston Symphony and the Russian al. Palmer then jumps from this idyll National Orchestra. In particular, he straight to the end of the opera (scene has worked in recent times with the 13) in which “General Winter” punishes Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony, the the retreating French army on the road Washington National Symphony and to Smolensk.
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