3 MAY FRIDAY SERIES 15 Helsinki Music Centre at 7 pm Hannu Lintu, conductor Virpi Räisänen, mezzo-soprano Mirjam Schulman & Annika Fuhrmann, soprano Jutta Seppinen & Pasi Hyökki, alto Simo Mäkinen & Paavo Hyökki, tenor Taavi Oramo & Sampo Haapaniemi, bass Giovanni Gabrieli: Canzone 12 min I Sonata pian’ e forte for 2 brass choirs II Canzona noni toni a 12 for 3 brass choirs III Sonata No. 20 for 5 brass choirs Luciano Berio: Sinfonia 35 min I II O King III In ruhig fliessender Bewegung (With quietly flowing movement) IV V INTERVAL 20 min 1 Luciano Berio: Folk Songs 23 min I Black is the colour II I wonder as I wander III Loosin yelav IV Rossignolet du bois V A la femminisca VI La donna ideale VII Ballo VIII Motettu de tristura IX Malurous qu’o uno fenno X Lo fïolairé XI Azerbaijan love-song Ottorino Respighi: I pini di Roma (The Pines of Rome) 22 min I I pini di Villa Borghese (Allegretto vivace – Vivace) II Pini presso una catacomba (Lento) III I pini del Gianicolo (Lento) IV I pini della Via Appia (Tempo di marcia) Interval at about 20.00. The concert ends at about 21.15. Broadcast live on Yle Radio 1 and on the Internet at yle.fi/rso. 2 GIOVANNI GABRIELI this concert: Sonata pian’ e forte for 2 brass choirs (edited by Robert King), (C. 1553/57–1612): the Canzona noni toni a 12 for 3 brass CANZONE choirs (ed. Robert A. Boudreau), the Giovanni Gabrieli was a Venetian com- Sonata No. 20 for 5 brass choirs (ed. poser. He was taught mainly by his un- David Baldwin). cle, Andrea Gabrieli, but he did stu- dy for a short time in Munich with Orlando di Lasso, and was influenced LUCIANO BERIO by his teacher’s style. (1925–2003): Gabrieli’s prolific output consists chiefly of music for the church; as a SINFONIA younger man he did also compose in Berio’s cult Sinfonia dates from 1968– secular genres and styles, though he 69, and in this case, the date is of grea- never produced anything based on ter than usual significance to the liste- dances, for example. He had a pen- ning experience. For 1968 was in many chant for the type of piece called a respects one of the great turning points canzona that was highly popular from of the modern era. The world was in the 1570s onwards. To this he added ef- turmoil: among the events of global fects using echoes and imitation bor- impact were the widespread student rowed from his uncle and Orlando, and riots in Europe and especially Paris, the in doing so took the canzona in a more assassination of Robert Kennedy and seminal and derivative direction. This Martin Luther King, and above all the means that ideas do not just follow one Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. from the other but are born of the ot- Most of the text of Berio’s Sinfonia is hers, as a continuation, a supplement taken from Le cru et le cuit (The Raw or a contrast to what has gone before. and the Cooked, 1964) by the “father This trend ultimately led to the birth of of modern anthropology” Claude Lévi- sonata form, but that still lay far ahead Strauss, but there are also some ex- in the future. cerpts from Samuel Beckett’s novel By the time Gabrieli died in 1612, the L’innomable (The Unnamable, 1953), madrigal style of Claudio Monteverdi instructions from the scores of Gustav was challenging the tradition fostered Mahler, slogans used in the Paris riots, and created by Gabrieli. The bulk of and other sources. the Venetian master’s works had been In the first movement Berio uses published in his lifetime, in the collec- Lévi-Strauss’s text in French. Lévi- tions Sacrae Symphoniae (1597) and Strauss had found that many myths Canzone per sonare (1608). The Canzone were structured like musical composi- e Sonate and Sacrae Symphoniae II were tions, so that some resembled a “fu- both published posthumously in 1615. gue”, for example, and others a “sona- Three works by Gabrieli under the ge- ta”. He had, however, found one type neral heading Canzone will be heard at of myth with a structure for which he 3 could find no musical counterpart. And LUCIANO BERIO: FOLK this is the one he used in his Sinfonia. The second movement is the most SONGS unambiguous: a beautiful tribute to Berio composed his Folk Songs “as a tri- Martin Luther King. As its text this bute to the extraordinary artistry” of vocal octet uses only phonemes of the American singer Cathy Berberian, the words O King, which is also the to whom he was married at the time. movement’s title. The first two songs were written by The third movement is marked In ru- the Kentucky folk singer John Jacob hig fliessender Bewegung (With quiet- Niles. A traditional tune exists for Black ly flowing movement) – a quotation is the colour, but Niles’s strict father or- from the scherzo of Mahler’s second dered him to compose a new one. He symphony. In practice, Mahler’s music developed the second song, I wonder really does flow along behind Berio’s as I wander, from a few lines he heard throughout the movement. The Mahler sung by the daughter of a Revivalist gradually becomes more and more au- preacher. Cathy Berberian’s family had dible, only to be drowned again be- come from Armenia, and the third neath the flood of quotations. Berio song, Loosin yelav is of Armenian ori- pours everything possible into the tor- gin and describes the rising moon. In rent: even a cursory list runs to dozens Rossignolet du bois a nightingale advi- of works by composers from Bach to ses a hesitant lover to sing a serenade Beethoven, via Debussy, Ravel, Richard for two hours after midnight and likens Strauss, Stravinsky, Schönberg, Berg the “apples” in the garden to the moon and Hindemith to Boulez, Stockhausen and the sun. A sustained chord then and Globokar. The result is a frenetic leads to the Sicilian song A la femmi- collage that helps to provide an insight nisca. The delightful strains colouring into the fragmented world of 1968; hu- the sound are produced by car springs mour also occupies a major role. used as percussion instruments. The fourth movement has no title Berio composed the sixth and se- and is very short. The idiom reverts to venth songs himself as a student in the that of the second movement, but the 1940s. The text of La donna ideale is a vocal writing is still unashamedly mo- folk poem in the old Genoese dialect. Its dern. Berio added a fifth movement af- advice is: if you can find a woman who ter the symphony had been premiered. is well-born, well-mannered, pleasing to His aim was, he said, “to create narrati- look at and has a good dowry, for God’s ve substance”, i.e. to restore order after sake don’t let her get away! Ballo is also the unruliness of the third movement an old Italian poem according to which in particular. Most of the text is again even the wisest men lose their heads borrowed from Lévi-Strauss. over love, but love can resist everything. Motettu de tristura comes from Sardinia and addresses a nightingale, to whom a sorrowful singer likens himself. 4 The ninth and tenth songs are in the the ground to tremble beneath their Occitan language. Malurous qu’o uno feet and ordered the organ to pull out fenno relates an eternal paradox: the all the stops on the bottom B flat pe- unmarried man wishes he had a spou- dal. He also scored in six ancient buc- se, and the married one wishes he did cina trumpets, nowadays usually repla- not. In Lo fïolairé a girl dreams of kis- ced by flugelhorns. The brass thunder sing her shepherd lad as she sits and as the army marches up the Capitoline spins. The last song is known in the Hill. cycle as an Azerbaijan love-song. Cathy The music of The Pines of Rome may, Berberian found it on an old, scratchy to the present-day listener, suggest Azerbaijan record, sung in Azerbaijan images of a different kind: the dancing, except for one verse in Russian compa- frolicking and flying humpback whales ring love to a stove. in the Disney film Fantasia 2000. Jouni Kaipainen (abridged) OTTORINO RESPIGHI (1879–1936): HANNU LINTU THE PINES OF ROME Chief Conductor Designate of the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra The Pines of Rome is in four movements for a term beginning in 2013, and for depicting trees in the Eternal City at the year leading up to this its Principal different times of the day. The first Guest Conductor, Hannu Lintu will (Pines of the Villa Borghese) is about be continuing his fruitful collaborati- noisy children playing soldiers and on with the Finnish Radio Symphony marching among the pine trees in the Orchestra for many years to come. Villa’s garden. The pines in the second Hannu Lintu studied in the Sibelius are near a catacomb in Campagna. An Academy’s conducting class taught by organ in the bass register enhances the Jorma Panula, Eri Klas and Ilja Musin. effect of this “majestic lament” domi- He has further been tutored by, among nated by the low instruments as they others, Myung Whun Chung at the describe the underground passages. Music Academy Siena. Winner of the The priests are represented by trom- Nordic Conducting Competition in bones.