27.2. WEDNESDAY SERIES 10 Helsinki Music Centre at 19:00

Hannu Lintu, conductor Olli Mustonen,

Qigang Chen: Les Cinq Eléménts 10 min I L’eau (Water) II Le bois (Wood) III Le feu (Fire) IV La terre (Earth) V Le métal (Metal)

Béla Bartók: No. 3 23 min I Allegretto II Adagio religioso III Allegro vivace

INTERVAL 20 MIN

1 Ville Raasakka: Black cloud, under ground, fp (Yle commission) 10 min I Below II Burning slow III Black smoke swirling through the cracks

Claude Debussy: La Mer 23 min I De l’aube à midi sur la mer (From dawn to noon on the sea) II Jeux de vagues (Play of the waves) III Dialogue du vent et de la mer (Dialogue of the wind and the sea)

Interval at about 19:50. The concert will end at about 20:55. Broadcast live on Yle Radio 1 and streamed at yle.fi/areena. A recording of the concert will be shown in the programme “RSO Musiikkitalossa” (The FRSO at the Helsinki Music Centre) on Yle Teema on 31.3. and 7.4. and on Yle TV 1 on 6.4. and 13.4.

PLEASE MAKE SURE THAT YOUR MOBILE PHONE IS SWITCHED OFF! Photographing, video and sound recording are prohibited during the concert.

2 QIGANG CHEN (B. 1951): one of the five elements. The result is five individual but closely-connected LES CINQ ELEMENTS panels. Chen paints his elements by rich and colourful orchestral means, The path to composerhood is seldom mixing together the distinctive shades smooth. Shanghai-born Qigang Chen and combinations thereof on his pal- belongs to the generation whose artis- ette. tic dreams were virtually trampled un- The opening Water is lyrical, delicate- derfoot by the Cultural Revolution of ly neo-impressionistic and undulating. the late 1960s. Once it was over, Chen Wood is a ‘pillar-like’ element and por- was one of the few to be accepted for trayed in sharper, twiggy sounds with the composition class at the Beijing quick twists and woody-sounding ges- Central Conservatory of Music in 1977. tures. The middle movement, Fire, be- Five years later, he was the winner of a gins with chords on the brass suggest- national composition competition that ing glowing heat rather than sparking allowed him to travel abroad. From flames. Maybe this is because fire, in 1984 to 1988 he studied in Paris with the Chinese way of thinking, is the ele- none other than , and ment of the life-maintaining heart and settled permanently in France. He was circulation. Earth is the most static of awarded French citizenship in 1992 the five movements, and Metal serves and has since become one of the most as an effective contrast with its rhyth- highly-acclaimed Chinese-born compo- mic punchiness. sers. Like Messiaen, Chen has combined elements of East and West in his mu- sic. When the French Radio commis- BÉLA BARTÓK sioned a work in 1998, he decided to (1881–1945): PIANO work on the idea of the five elements central to Chinese philosophy. The re- CONCERTO NO. 3 sult was Wu Xing (The Five Elements, 1999) that has become the orchestral Béla Bartók’s health began to deteri- work by him most often performed. orate in 1942. It appeared he was suf- In China, the idea of the five ele- fering from what would prove to be ments stretches right back to prehis- a fatal heart disease that cast a deep toric times. The five elements are be- shadow over the last few years of his hind the most varied of phenomena: life. He was nevertheless full of plans the calendar, astrology, religious rites, right up to the very end. Summer 1945 cooking, dress, spatial arrangement found him working on three large-sca- (Feng shui), music, martial arts, medi- le works – his seventh , a cine, etc. They are present in just about viola concerto and his third piano con- everything. certo – but he was able to finish only Each of the short movements in the last of these. Only four days before Chen’s work is named after and reflects his death in New York on 26 September

3 1945 he was still working on his concer- variation on the numerous night musics to. He managed all but the last 17 bars, of Bartók’s slow movements. which his musical friend Tibor Serly The finale is a full-of-life rondo with completed from his sketches. a pinch of Hungarian spice in its main From the late-1930s onwards, Bartók theme. Its triumphant progress is en- had begun favouring a more balanced, riched by the intervening fugue pas- softer mode of expression rather than sages. On the last stave of the sketch, the sharp, incisive idiom of his earlier Bartók wrote the Hungarian word vége compositions. The third piano concer- meaning “The End”. It was the first – and to continues along these lines. He was last – time he ever wrote it at the end probably also influenced by the knowl- of a work. edge that whereas he had written his earlier piano works mainly for his own Kimmo Korhonen use, he knew that death was approach- ing and wanted his third piano concer- to to be a gift and a source of income for his wife, Ditta Pásztory. VILLE RAASAKKA The concerto’s texture is for the most (B. 1977): BLACK CLOUD, part translucent, its moods sunny, trusting and full of energy. The form is UNDER GROUND also clear-cut and consciously neoclas- sical. The opening movement emerges Ville Raasakka combines traditional mu- in octaves with a decorative first theme sical sounds with noises of indetermina- and grows into traditional sonata form te pitch. He also uses microtones, and with two themes, a development and a unusual timbres produced by extended recapitulation. musical techniques, thereby expanding The slow movement is moving in its the concept of music to include sound simplicity. Bartók, who claimed to be an art. He has also done sound installations atheist, gave it the possibly unexpected and is now branching out into works in- marking “Adagio religioso”. This alludes corporating video. above all to the devout nature of the The emphasis in his recent works has music and is thought to have been a been on ones connected to specific plac- deliberate reference to the slow move- es and spaces. He transforms the sounds ment of Beethoven’s string quartet op. of a chosen place or space into musical 132 headed “Heiliger Dankgesang eines material, thus combining programme Genesenen an die Gottheit” (Holy Song music and musique concrète. His works of Thanks by a Convalescent to the often feature contemporary phenomena Deity). To begin with, the movement that are overloading and impoverishing is a chorale-like dialogue between the the environment. strings and piano, but in the middle In Hypermarket and hypercommodity section it bursts out into a fantastically (2015), a work in the nature of a concer- colourful fairy-tale world – yet another to, the soloist uses various objects relat-

4 ed to consumption and packaging ma- al and state authorities spent USD 41.7 terials, such as banknotes, credit cards, million trying to put the fire out and etc., in addition to a piano. Though rectify the situation, but the only out- operating as instruments and blend- come was the resettling of the entire ing naturally with the musical texture, population of the town 22 years later, these objects also have a contentual di- in 1984. The fire is expected to burn for mension in that they comment on con- another 200–250 years. sumption. In Hammer, hammer, on the Since the burning mine cannot be wall, who’s the fairest of them all? (2017), entered (coal burns at a tempera- the is supplemented by tools ture as high as 720°C), I could not get and sounds recorded on a building site. any sound material or pictures there. Heading the list of works by Raasakka, Instead, I used field recordings of four along with those for orchestra, is the mines right near Centralia: the echoing cantata Supermarket aisles on a secu- sounds of water dripping in the mine, rity camera (2012–2013), a setting for stationary sound waves (a sort of hum), mixed choir and ensemble of poems by sounds of a Breaker machine (that cuts Kristiina Wallin. He has also composed and sorts the coal into chunks of dif- chamber and solo works. ferent sizes), footsteps in the mine, In 2016, Ville Raasakka began work- and digger hydraulics (sounds of heav- ing for an artistic Doctorate in music ing up and down). I also used sounds at the , supplement- of local coal burning in a stove (snap- ing his studies with courses in Time ping and roaring). The recordings are and Space Arts at the Academy of Fine from the Blashak Coal Mine, Black Arts, Helsinki. Diamond Mine, Pioneer Tunnel Mine Ville Raasakka tells about his compo- and Reading Cold Mine 20 km from sition Black cloud, under ground (2017– Centralia. 2018): I studied the sounds with analysis “Centralia is a town in Pennsylvania software to produce musical material. known for its coal mines and anthra- The result was a work in which the dra- cite production. It stands on old, aban- ma takes place the whole time under doned coal mines and is surrounded by ground, as it were, and never breaks others still operating. out into the light of day – music that, In 1962, fire broke out in a nearby like a black cloud, swirls right around mine and gradually spread through the the players. Muffled echoes issue from tunnels beneath the town. Lethal gases deep in the orchestral mines: at the be- began to swirl up through cracks in the ginning I placed microscopic allusions ground. People fell sick, as the carbon to Bartók’s third piano concerto and at dioxide, nitrogen oxide and sulphur the end to Debussy’s La Mer. As if they dioxide rising through the earth col- had plunged into the depths from both lected in their homes. Monitors were sides of my work.” installed in houses to prevent people from choking as they slept. The feder-

5 CLAUDE DEBUSSY and presented first on a muted trum- pet. The second, on the woodwinds, (1862–1918): LA MER grows into one of the most sustained in all Debussy. In the middle of the Claude Debussy completed La Mer, a movement is a magic, shimmering mo- masterpiece of musical impressionism, ment of calm, after which the music in 1905. Its premiere in Paris in October builds up to a dazzling climax. that year got a mixed reception, but it has since become one of the best-kno- Kimmo Korhonen wn works of its era. Programme notes translated La Mer is subtitled by Debussy (abridged) by Susan Sinisalo as “Three symphonic sketches for orchestra”. He was not really a ‘sympho- nic’ , and the key word here is ‘sketches’. Even so, La Mer is actually OLLI MUSTONEN his most symphonic work, and its three movements could well be likened to , conductor and composer, Olli the opening movement, scherzo and fi- Mustonen studied the piano with Ralf nale of a symphony. There are also the- Gothóni and Eero Heinonen and won matic links between the movements. second prize in the Eurovision Young The first movement emerges from Musicians competition in 1984. He the mysterious, silent mist as the sun made his London debut two years later begins to rise. The introduction pre- and has since been the soloist with top sents one of the work’s main themes the world over. on a cor anglais and a muted trum- Mustonen has released dozens of pet – this theme will be heard again in discs on different labels; that of Preludes the last movement. When the opening by Shostakovich and Alkan (1991) won movement bursts into life, it is bathed both Edison and Gramophone Awards. in sunlight. A dancing, swinging theme His discography also includes solo discs on the divided ushers in the of works by Mussorgsky, Beethoven, movement’s second main section. Bach, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Play of the Waves is airy and sparkling, Scriabin, Sibelius, Prokofiev and others, as the wind and the sunshine frolic on and he was both the soloist and the the waves. The thematic motifs are conductor in a recording of the com- constantly on the move and avoid firm plete Beethoven piano concerto cycle outlines. with the Tapiola Sinfonietta. He has re- The final Dialogue is more dramatic corded the Prokofiev piano concertos and dynamic than the other two move- with Hannu Lintu and the FRSO and is ments, and the ‘symphonic’ element is now recording the complete Bartók pi- more pronounced. There are two cen- ano concertos. tral themes, the first borrowed from A guest conductor with numerous the introduction to the first movement orchestras both in and abroad,

6 Mustonen was the founder of the premieres a number of Yle commissions. Helsinki Festival Orchestra that gave Another of the orchestra’s tasks is to re- its debut concert in 2001. He has tak- cord all Finnish orchestral music for the en this orchestra on tour to Central Yle archive. During the 2018/2019 sea- Europe, Japan and China. son, the FRSO will premiere four Finnish The compositions by Olli Mustonen works commissioned by Yle. consist mainly of chamber and orches- The FRSO has recorded works by tral music. They include two sympho- Mahler, Ligeti, Eötvös, Sibelius, Lindberg, nies (2011, 2013), a concerto for three Saariaho, Sallinen, Kaipainen, Kokkonen (1998) and a sonata for and others, and the debut disc of the and orchestra (2013), and in the cham- opera Aslak Hetta by Armas Launis. Its ber music category two nonets (1995, disc of the Bartók violin concertos with 2000), a sonata for and piano Christian Tetzlaff and conductor Hannu (2006), and a quartet for , violin, Lintu won a Gramophone Award in 2018, viola and piano (2011). and that of tone poems and songs by Sibelius an International Classical Music Award. It was also Gramophone maga- zine’s Editor’s Choice in November 2017 and BBC Music Magazine’s Record of THE FINNISH the Month in January 2018. Its forthcom- RADIO SYMPHONY ing albums are of music by Lutosławski, ORCHESTRA Fagerlund and Beethoven. The FRSO regularly tours to all parts of The Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra the world. During the 2018/2019 season (FRSO) is the orchestra of the Finnish its schedule will include a tour of Finland Broadcasting Company (Yle). Its mission under Hannu Lintu, to Pietarsaari, is to produce and promote Finnish mu- Kauhajoki, Forssa and Lahti. sical culture and its Chief Conductor as FRSO concerts are broadcast live on of autumn 2013 has been Hannu Lintu. the Yle Areena channel and Yle Radio 1 The Radio Orchestra of ten players and recorded on Yle Teema and Yle TV 1. formed in 1927 later grew to sympho- ny orchestra size in the 1960s. Over the years, its Chief Conductors have been Toivo Haapanen, Nils-Eric Fougstedt, , Okko Kamu, Leif Segerstam, Jukka-Pekka Saraste and . In addition to the great Classical- Romantic masterpieces, the latest con- temporary music is a major item in the repertoire of the FRSO, which each year

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