14.9. FRIDAY SERIES 1 Helsinki Music Centre at 19:00 Hannu Lintu, conductor James Sherlock, assistant conductor Anu Komsi, soprano (Marie) Jeni Packalen, alto (Wesener’s Mother) Hilary Summers, contralto (Stolzius’s Mother) Juha Uusitalo, bass (Wesener) Peter Tantsits, tenor (Desportes) Ville Rusanen, baritone (Stolzius) Bernd Alois Zimmermann: Die Soldaten – Vocal Symphony, fpF 30 min Preludio Introduzione. Act 1, Scene 3 (Ricercari 1) Act 1, Scene 5 (Notturno 1) Act 2 Intermezzo and Scene 2 (Capriccio, corale e ciacona 2) INTERVAL 20 min Einojuhani Rautavaara: Symphony No. 6 “Vincentiana” 42 min I Starry Night II The Crows III Saint-Rémy IV Apotheosis Interval at about 19:45. The concert will end at about 21:00. Broadcast live on Yle Radio 1 and Yle Areena. The concert will be shown in two parts in the Yle Teema programme “RSO Musiikkitalossa” (The FRSO at the Helsinki Music Centre) on 23.9. and 30.9. with repeats on Yle TV 1 on 29.9. and 6.10. 1 BERND ALOIS jazz allusions and references to Bach’s St. Matthew Passion (1729). In its overall ZIMMERMANN: DIE sound, the Vocal Symphony represents SOLDATEN – VOCAL post-war modernism at its most typical, SYMPHONY except that it makes versatile use of the human voice. It is noisy and cacophonic, thus underlining its anti-war nature. Bernd Alois Zimmermann (1918–1970) According to Zimmermann, the opera wrote his Vocal Symphony under very is about “the fateful constellation of so- unusual circumstances. In 1957, Cologne cial classes, conditions, and characters”, Opera had commissioned him to write and in this respect it is reminiscent of the opera Die Soldaten (The Soldiers), the operas of Berg. Zimmermann also but five years passed and it was still not bows to Berg in calling the main char- finished. The premiere had to be post- acter in his opera Marie, as in Berg’s poned as the score was said to be im- Wozzeck. In both, Marie is a middle-class possible to perform. In order to convince girl who, in going her own way, inevita- the client and the contemporary mu- bly drifts away from her community and sic community that this was not true, becomes a prostitute. Zimmermann put together a “teaser”, Zimmermann was unlike the oth- as it would nowadays be termed, and er composers of his day in that he had called it a Vocal Symphony. This was faith in opera. In this respect he dif- premiered by the WDR Cologne in 1963. fered from, say, Pierre Boulez (1925– The Vocal Symphony is based on Die 2016), who provocatively wanted to Soldaten (1776), a play by Sturm und “blow up opera houses”, which he con- Drang writer Jakob Michael Reinhold sidered to be obsolete and bourgeois. Lenz (1751–1792), to a libretto by Zimmermann wrote essays both ex- Zimmermann and stage director-dram- plaining his opera The Soldiers and theo- aturge Erich Bormann. Interestingly, retically examining the potential of op- the same play by Lenz also inspired the era in the latter half of the 20th century. opera Wozzeck (1925) by Alban Berg Performing The Soldiers requires a (1885–1935), and the play Woyzeck by vast machinery and is challenging for Georg Büchner (1813–1837) premiered the theatre, requiring several scenes in 1913. to be staged simultaneously. The Vocal The half-hour Vocal Symphony is Symphony presents this major landmark scored for six voices and orchestra. It in 20th-century German opera in a nut- consists of a Prelude and two Acts di- shell. vided into five Scenes. The music relies on the 12-note system of Berg, and like Liisamaija Hautsalo the opera The Soldiers uses tradition- al musical forms ranging from a noc- turne to a chorale. Counterbalancing the atonal textures are, for example, 2 EINOJUHANI Saint-Rémy mental asylum and suicide. Rautavaara views the fate of van Gogh RAUTAVAARA against his art, the vibrant colours in his (1928–2016): paintings that transcend the abject re- SYMPHONY NO. 6 ality. “VINCENTIANA” Rautavaara’s sixth symphony, Vincentiana, grew out of material from the opera in 1992. The first and second Einojuhani Rautavaara was not perhaps movements are based on the preludes disinclined to write symphonies, but the to Acts I and II of Vincent and are musi- symphonic tradition did challenge him cal images of two famous paintings by to question and refute it. His eight sym- van Gogh: Starry Night and Wheat Field phonies are, as a result, all very different, with Crows. The third movement, Saint- and a gap of over 20 years separates the Rémy, varies motifs from the second fourth (1962) and fifth (1985). Act, while Apotheosis looks to the final Rautavaara disliked the idea of press- scene in he opera. ing musical material into fixed struc- The sixth symphony is not a rehash tures: “I’ve never really understood the of the opera. It is an independent work talk of music as rational architecture, of that, by extended orchestral means, en- the composer as an architect or build- ters into van Gogh’s paintings and met- er. Ages ago I wrote that ‘music is the aphorically traces his life. It operates on way sound materials grow’. It’s all about various planes of reality, the mundane growth, not the placing of elements and and ideal world. Separating them is a modules, bricks and timber.” synthesiser, here assigned an independ- Recorded in Rautavaara’s autobiog- ent role. raphy Omakuva (Self-Portrait) in 1989, The first movement, Starry Night, is these sentiments reflect the turn in the longest. Rautavaara immerses him- his art that took place in the 1980s. He self in the painting’s colours – the deep, wrote the one-movement fifth sympho- dark blues, the twinkling yellows and the ny in 1985 as the last part of the “Angel swirling brushstrokes. Maybe the music Trilogy” commissioned by the FRSO. also reflects the painting’s composition, His marriage in 1984 marked the the fantastic starlit night and the town, beginning of a happier, more harmo- the human world huddled beneath it. nious stage in the life of Einojuhani The first dramatic climax prepares the Rautavaara. Lurking behind the hap- way for the synthesiser’s entrance. The piness and stability in the music are second climax comes at the end of the the internal and external demons that movement, after a long build-up. occupied the leading role in his opera The painting behind the second Vincent. The story of the life of Vincent movement is Wheat Field with Crows. van Gogh, the famous Dutch painter, The synthesiser is now present from the tells the classic ordeal of a misunder- very beginning, enhancing the gloomy stood genius who ended his days in images with rumbling percussions and 3 jeering brass. After the aggressive be- ule will include appearances with the ginning, the music calms down in mel- Baltimore, St Louis and Cincinnati ancholy hymn-like tones. Symphony Orchestras, the New Japan The third movement, Saint-Rémy, is Philharmonic, the Singapore Symphony, based on the dance scene in Act 2 of the NDR Symphony Hamburg and oth- the opera and the prelude to Act 3. A er orchestras. Further highlights of the scherzo beginning as the waltz of the season will include his debut with the innocents, it works up to a demonic Boston Symphony and the Russian whirl at the end of which all sense of National Orchestra. In particular, he reality is dispelled and the synthesiser has worked in recent times with the gains full command. Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony, the Reflecting on the last of his paintings, Washington National Symphony and Rautavaara became convinced that van the Symphony Orchestras of Dallas Gogh’s story was not a tragedy. Van and Detroit. Gogh was not, he said, a mentally dis- Maestro Lintu also conducts reg- turbed neurotic disappointed with life ularly at the Finnish National Opera and seeking death; he was a strong but and the Savonlinna Opera Festival. He sensitive human being who saw light, conducted Giuseppe Verdi’s Otello in joy and beauty all around. Rautavaara Savonlinna in July 2018 and his sched- therefore wanted to end with an apoth- ule for spring 2019 includes a pro- eosis. duction of Alban Berg’s Wozzeck in This conclusion is even more impres- Helsinki. sive in the symphony’s closing move- Hannu Lintu studied the piano and ment. Apotheosis exudes a sense of cello at the Sibelius Academy be- appeasement. The demons have been fore joining the conducting class of crushed and the synthesiser blends with Jorma Panula. He attended master- the chirruping winds. At the end of the classes with Myung Whun Chung at opera, Rautavaara quotes from a letter L’Accademia Musicale Chigiana, Siena in which van Gogh tells his brother that and won first prize in the Nordic whoever should die that day would nev- Conducting Competition in Bergen in er vanish but would join those who once 1994. He has recorded on the Ondine, dared to live. BIS, Hyperion and other labels. Antti Häyrynen ANU KOMSI HANNU LINTU Finnish coloratura Anu Komsi has won renown at opera houses and leading Hannu Lintu has been Chief Conductor concert venues the world over for her of the Finnish Radio Symphony dynamic voice and her broad reper- Orchestra since August 2013. During toire, and especially her performances the 2018/2019 season, his sched- of contemporary music. She has ap- 4 peared with many top orchestras, such sung in such premieres as Into the Little as the Berlin, New York and Los Angeles Hill by George Benjamin at the Bastille, Philharmonics, the BBC Symphony and Carter’s What Next at the Berlin State the Ensemble Intercontemporain.