2.3. THURSDAY SERIES 7 Helsinki Music Centre at 19.00 John Storgårds, conductor Golda Schultz, soprano Ernest Pingoud: La face d’une grande ville 25 min 1. La rue oubliée 2. Fabriques 3. Monuments et fontaines 4. Reclames lumineuses 5. Le cortege des chomeurs 6. Vakande hus 7. Dialog der Strassenlaternen mit der Morgenröte W. A. Mozart: Concert aria “Misera, dove son” 7 min W. A. Mozart: Concert aria “Vado, ma dove” 4 min W. A. Mozart: Aria “Non più di fiori” 9 min from the opera La clemenza di Tito INTERVAL 20 min John Adams: City Noir, fpF 30 min I The City and its Double II The Song is for You III Boulevard Nighto Interval at about 20.00. The concert ends at about 21.00. 1 ERNEST PINGOUD rare in Finnish orchestral music, as was the saxophone that enters the scene a (1887–1942): LA FACE moment later. The short, quick Neon D’UNE GRANDE VILLE Signs likewise represents new technol- ogy: their lights flicker in a xylophone, The works of Ernest Pingoud fall into and galloping trumpets assault the lis- three main periods. The young com- tener’s ears. The dejected Procession of poser was a Late-Romantic in the spirit the Unemployed makes the suite a true of Richard Strauss, but in the 1910s he picture of the times; the Western world turned toward a more animated brand was, after all, in the grips of the great of Modernism inspired by Scriabin and depression. Houses Waking provides a Schönberg. In the mid-1920s – as it glimpse of the more degenerate side happened around the time the days of urban life, since the houses are of of the concert focusing on a particular course brothels in which life swings composer began to be numbered – he to the beat of a fairly slow dance-hall entered a more tranquil late period and waltz. The night also ends in a broth- ceased composing at his earlier pace. el, and the suite closes with Dialogue of It was at this stage that he established Street Lamps and Morning Glow return- the Fazer concert agency and with ing to the mysterious mood of the first it the Suomi Jazz Orchestra. He also movement. The melodies heard above wrote popular songs under the pseudo- it initially seem disjointed but never- nyms Johnny Loke and Lauri Ilari. theless build up to a final big bang. The orchestral suite La face d’une La face d’une grande ville is very de- grande ville (1937) is probably his best- scriptive, almost cinematic, and it is known work. It also exists as a ballet. perfect for a ballet. Over the decades It is the first Finnish work subscribing the face of the city has, of course, to ‘machine romanticism’. Until then, changed, but Pingoud’s musical por- Finnish music had not taken up urban trait is nevertheless still topical. subjects, and Pingoud, if anyone, was an out-and-out urban composer. The seven-movement suite begins with a wistful Forgotten Street, a piece W.A. MOZART of fragile violin and woodwind melo- (1756–1791): ARIAS dies on just a few notes over a pacing harp. Factory is a feverish movement of The human voice was, for Mozart, an thundering machines and howling con- instrument almost as close as the pi- veyor belts – there are production tar- ano and violin. In his youth, he took gets to meet! This is machine romanti- singing lessons and occasionally sang cism at its purest. Statues and Fountains in public until his voice broke; in a reedy inhabits a calmer, even misty town- voice but with great feeling, according scape; in the 1930s the vibraphone – a to contemporary reports. His person- sinful jazz instrument! – was still very al experience of singing would greatly 2 benefit him later as an opera compos- ma dove does have some more serious er. His operas are full of solos acting as overtones, especially when the opening windows into the characters’ souls, and Allegro gives way to a calmer Andante he also wrote ‘insert arias’ for operas by sostenuto in triple time. other composers. Added to these are Non più di fiori is Vitellia’s aria in the some fifty or so arias he composed for opera La clemenza di Tito to a libretto singers he knew and for concert use. by Metastasio commissioned to com- Misera, dove son was written in memorate the coronation of Emperor Munich in March 1781, in a fit of ela- Leopold II in Prague in 1791. A fitting tion after the premiere of his opera work for the occasion, the opera prais- Idomeneo. While composing it, Mozart es the infinite clemency of the Roman maybe cast his mind back to his child- Emperor Titus (Tito) when, at the end, hood and his aria-composing roots; he he pardons all who have schemed had penned his very first aria in London against him. These include Vitellia, in early 1765, a number called Va, dal daughter of the deposed Emperor furor portata for the opera Ezio to a Vitellius, who had hoped in vain to be- text by the most celebrated librettist come his wife. In Non più di fiori, an aria of the 18th century, Pietro Metastasio. of beautiful cantabile singing and dra- In this drama set in ancient Rome, the matic emotional force towards the end Emperor and General Ezio are both in of the opera, she confesses her plot to love with Fulvia, whose father tries to Tito. hatch a plot against the Emperor. In the recitative and aria Misera, dove son, Fulvia bemoans her father’s treachery and her own situation. The climax of JOHN ADAMS (b. 1947): the expressive, emotional recitative CITY NOIR glides into an aria that begins in tran- quil mood before building up to a quick To the young John Adams, Los Angeles section in which she hopes – in vain – and indeed the whole of California for a bolt from heaven. were both distant and exotic. Raised in Vado, ma dove is one of Mozart’s in- New England, he received his musical sert arias. He composed it for the op- education at Harvard, but in the early era Il burbero di buon cuore (The Good- 1970s fell under the spell of the west Hearted Curmudgeon, 1786) by his coast and settled there; not, howev- Spanish rival Vicente Martín y Soler to a er, in Los Angeles, but slightly further libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte based on north in the San Francisco area. And a comedy in French by Carlo Goldoni there he lives to this day, celebrating about an angry old man and the people his 70th birthday on February 15. around him. One of these is the profli- The early works by Adams in the gate Madama Lucilla, and it is for her 1970s come close to Minimalism. Yet that Mozart wrote both his insert arias. even then, he was already seeking a Although this was a comic opera, Vado, more clearly process-like mode of com- 3 position than that cultivated by the peopled with strange characters – the pure Minimalists, and he continued in kind who only come out very late on a a “post-Minimalist” direction leading very hot night.” at times to rich chromaticism and at others to the emotional force of Late- Romanticism. JOHN STORGÅRDS City Noir is, says Adams, a “three-movement symphony”. The Now Principal Guest Conductor of opening movement, The City and its the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra as Double, begins with a brief, powerful well as Canada’s National Arts Centre “wide-screen panorama that gives way Orchestra Ottawa, Artistic Partner to a murmuring dialogue between the of the Munich Chamber Orchestra double bass pizzicato and the scurry- and Artistic Director of the Lapland ing figures in the woodwinds and key- Chamber Orchestra, John Storgårds has boards. The steady tick of a jazz drum- also served as Chief Conductor of the mer impels this tense and nervous Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra and activity forward – a late-hour empty the Tampere Philharmonic. He began street scene, if you like.” After a rhyth- his career as a violinist and as leader mically striking build-up, the music of the Avanti! Chamber Orchestra, the slips straight into This Song is for You. Swedish Radio Symphony and other or- “Gradually a melodic profile in the solo chestras, and he studied conducting at alto sax emerges from the surrounding the Sibelius Academy. pools of chromatically tinted sonori- Outside his native Finland John ties. Once spent of its fuel, the move- Storgårds has conducted orchestras such ment returns to the quiet opening mu- as the New York and Oslo Philharmonics, sic, ending with pensive solos by the the NHK Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo principal horn and viola.” and the Symphony Orchestras of St. The closing Boulevard Night begins Louis, Toronto, Vancouver and Go- with a nocturnal soundscape. From this henburg. Engagements in spring 2017 emerges a solo trumpet carrying asso- include appearances with the Cincinnati ciations in Adams’s mind with Roman Symphony, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Polanski’s Chinatown, the film noir of Orchestra and the Stockholm Phil- Los Angeles. “Sometimes, as in the harmonic. jerky stop-start coughing engine mu- The disc by John Storgårds and the sic in the staccato strings, it is animal Lapland Chamber Orchestra of the and pulsing; and other times, as in the horn and theremin concertos by Kalevi slinky, sinuous saxophone theme that Aho won a prestigious ECHO KLASSIK keeps coming back, each time with an award in 2015, and that of the com- extra layer of stage makeup, it is in- plete Sibelius symphonies with the your-face brash and uncouth.