1

15 Januarywednesday serIes 8Helsinki Music Centre at 19.00

Hannu Lintu, conductorAngela Hewitt, pianoValérie Hartmann-Claverie, ondes Martenot

W. A. Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 23 in A Major KV 488 26 min

I AllegroII Adagio III Allegro assai

INTERVAL 20 min

Olivier Messiaen: Turangalîla Symphony 80 min

I Introduction (Modéré, un peu vif) II Chant d’amour 1 (Love Song 1) (Modéré, lourd) III Turangalîla 1 (Presque lent, rêveur) IV Chant d’amour 2 (Love Song 2) (Bien modéré) V Joie du sang des étoiles (Joy of the Blood of the Stars) (Vif, passionné, avec joie) VI Jardin du sommeil d’amour (The Garden of Love’s Sleep) (Très modéré, très tendre) VII Turangalîla 2 (Un peu vif, bien modéré) VIII Développement de l’amour (The Development of Love) (Bien modéré)IX Turangalîla 3 (Bien modéré) X Finale (Modéré, presque vif, avec une grande joie)

Interval at about 19.40. The concert ends at about 21.20.Broadcast live on yle radio 1 and the Internet (yle.fi/klassinen).

2

w. a. MozarT (1756–1791): PIano ConCerTo no. 23

Moving to Vienna, the musical capi-tal of europe, in 1781, Mozart hoped to reap success as a freelance composer in the city of his dreams. The trendiest of instruments in Vienna at that time was the piano and, being a virtuoso pianist, Mozart was soon in great de-mand. He composed his piano concer-tos primarily for himself: to impress his audiences of his skill not only as a com-poser but as a performer, too.

1786 was a significant year in Mozart’s career. In addition to his opera The Marriage of Figaro he completed nu-merous other works, among them the Piano Concerto no. 23 in a Major (KV 488), premiered on March 2. written in one of his most prolific and most suc-cessful years in Vienna, it is a work of dazzling soulfulness.

The opening Allegro begins in sunny vein with a tender melody. The main and second themes first stated on the strings and woodwinds are then ta-ken up by the piano with crystal clarity. Cast in sonata form, the Allegro takes a new turn when Mozart deviates from the stereotypical scheme with an unex-pected new melody. The recapitulation then blends the themes together.

The second movement, a slow Adagio, is in melancholy mood, though it is not without a gleam of hope in the wistful middle section. overflowing with sen-timent, the Adagio is the only Mozart movement in the key of F sharp mi-

nor; another feature unusual for him is the dotted siciliano rhythm. The joyful last movement, Allegro assai, comes as a surprise. rich in themes and motifs tossed here and there, the finale ref-lects Mozart’s ability to create drama through instrumentation.

no. 23 is one of Mozart’s best and ob-viously most popular Piano Concertos, for familiar themes from it are often heard in films and advertisements.

Tuula Musakka (abridged)

olIVIer MessIaen (1908–1992): Turan-galîla syMPHony

“It’s a love song.” – Olivier Messiaen

olivier Messiaen composed his Turangalîla (meaning “love song, hymn of joy”) Symphony in 1946–1948 as a commission from serge Koussevitzky for the Boston symphony orchestra. Koussevitzky gave him a completely free hand to produce whatever he wis-hed, and what was originally to have been a symphony in four movements swelled to a work in ten that could more aptly be classified as a huge pia-no concerto.

The instrumentation is interesting. The normal percussion section of a symphony orchestra is expanded to an exotic battery for 8–11 players and ranges from an american vibraphone to Japanese temple blocks and latin american maracas. In addition to the

3

piano there is also an electric ondes Martenot that could be described as a cross between a small organ and a stringed instrument.

Turangalîla differs from the typical religious frame of Messiaen’s music. of all his works, it is the most down-to-earth, even though it does at times soar loftily from crude aural eroticism to the cosmic spheres of ethereal love.

Messiaen’s distinctive style is very much in evidence: imitation birdsong in a jungle of Indian rhythms as the most varied of timbres shift from se-rene, monochrome shimmering to dazzling, glaring fireworks. listening to Messiaen, it is vital to think in terms of colour, for it is on colour that his world of sound to a great extent rests.

as a listening experience, Turangalîla is at the very least enormous by vir-tue of its length and its broad timbral spectrum alone. The tinkling, rattling, booming and exploding percussions shake the music along while the fren-zied glissandos of the ondes Martenot build up to howling climaxes. In bet-ween the bursts of ecstasy, the music rests in dreamy oases of tranquillity as the birds (piano and woodwinds) arou-se the other voices to dances ever new.

Toni Heino (abridged)

Programme notes written in collaboration with the University of Turku Department of Musicology.

an InTerVIew wITH Hannu lInTu

Hannu Lintu, you are right now involved in a major project with Angela Hewitt, re-cording Mozart Piano Concertos. Seeing that your own instrument is also the pia-no, to what extent do you approach these works as a keyboard player?

naturally I feel the closest affinity with the concertos I played as a student, in-cluding this one in a major. Being fa-miliar with it from the piano stool un-doubtedly affects my concept of tempo most. a conductor is not in physical contact with his instrument, and this may make finding the right tempo dif-ficult. sometimes it’s enlightening and instructive to approach things from an instrumental perspective. Tempo, its vi-tality and workability are the parame-ters that make Mozart’s music live or die. The ongoing recording project has proved yet again that if the tempo is right, many of the problems of charac-ter and phrasing will automatically be solved.

How do you link Mozart and Messiaen in your mind?

People often ask me to explain why I’ve chosen particular works for a concert programme. sometimes the links are obvious, but sometimes I can’t neces-sarily explain them even to myself. My programme planning is often intuiti-ve. In the ideal case, there seem to be endless possible ties within a program-

4

me, more than I imagined even. Then again, sometimes no one seems to get the idea. and you must remember that there isn’t necessarily any idea: just a feeling that this is the way to go.

when angela Hewitt and I were loo-king at the programme for this con-cert, we decided that it constitutes a harmonic entity even though the two works have no link whatsoever between them at musical, philosophical or histo-rical level. sometimes it may be hard to juxtapose two musically powerful and profound works; it’s better to put something easier to digest in between and give the audience’s brains a chance to rest as well. But these two master-pieces will, we hope, complement each other so that the programme as a who-le will not get clogged up.

Messiaen’s Turangalîla Symphony is a big 20th-century work. The score is written in great detail and it’s been performed a lot. Is trying to make a version of your own of a work so explicitly charted especially difficult?

To my mind, it’s far from being exhaus-tively charted. as with all good scores, you can always discover new aspects. This symphony enjoyed something of a boom in the late 70s and early 80s, when it was performed a lot. nowadays Turangalîla is quite seldom perfor-med, even though it’s one of the 20th century’s cult works.

Turangalîla has such a complex sco-re that you can approach it in count-less different ways. and there are un-doubtedly dozens that still haven’t

been tried. some of the Turangalîla recordings are fine musically but their balance is shaky, while others are a bit better as recordings but the playing is messy. I’ve thought about this a lot now that we’re going to record it, too. we need a coherent performance com-bined with precision recording. I hope we’ll achieve a more balanced result than the ones we are accustomed to. and what a challenge that is! as re-gards balance, Turangalîla will be the most complex score I’ve ever recorded. recording the ondes Martenot and the percussions alone is a chapter in itself. But I believe that a quality recording does greatest justice to the work: in a concert performance, there is inevitab-ly a slight imbalance in the relationship between the instrument sections and the soloists.

Lotta Emanuelsson (abridged)

5

angela HewITT

Canadian pianist angela Hewitt regu-larly appears in recital and with ma-jor orchestras throughout europe, the americas and asia. Her performances and recordings of Bach have drawn particular praise. In a project lasting ten years she recorded all the major key-board works by Bach on the Hyperion label, winning many prizes. In addition to Bach her discography includes works by Beethoven, schumann, Messiaen, ravel, Chopin, rameau and others.

Highlights of the present season include concerts with the Frso, the london and Brussels Philharmonics, the sydney and Brazil symphonies and the welsh national orchestra. angela Hewitt can also be heard in seoul, Tokyo, glasgow, Bilbao and san Francisco, and with Musica Viva on its tour of australia.

angela Hewitt was named ‘artist of the year’ at the gramophone awards and awarded an oBe in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 2006. she lives in london but also has homes in ottawa and in Italy, where she is artistic director of the Trasimeno Music Festival in umbria.

ValérIe HarTMann-ClaVerIe

Valérie Hartmann-Claverie studied the ondes Martenot at the Paris Conservatoire, where she now teach-es. In 1973 she gave her debut concert in Vienna, and now performs throug-hout europe with prestigious orchest-ras such as the Berlin and new york Philharmonics, the BBC orchestras and the Vienna Philharmonic, with con-ductors as such as seiji ozawa, Kent nagano, Kurt Masur, zubin Mehta and Pierre Boulez. she regularly receives invitations from all over the world to perform works by Messiaen, many of which she has also recorded.

Valérie Hartmann-Claverie was a member of the loriod sextet from 1974 to 1995, and in 1996 she founded the ondes de Choc quartet.

6

THe FInnIsH radIo syMPHony orCHesTra

The Finnish radio symphony orchestra (Frso) is the orchestra of the Finnish Broadcasting Company (yle). Its missi-on is to produce and promote Finnish musical culture and its Chief Conductor as of autumn 2013 is Hannu lintu.

The radio orchestra of ten players founded in 1927 grew to symphony or-chestra strength in the 1960s. Its previo-us Chief Conductors have been Toivo Haapanen, nils-eric Fougstedt, Paavo Berglund, okko Kamu, leif segerstam, Jukka-Pekka saraste and sakari oramo. The Frso has two Honorary Conductors: Jukka-Pekka saraste and sakari oramo.

The latest contemporary music is a major item in the repertoire of the Frso, which each year premieres a number of yle commissions. another of the orchestra’s tasks is to record all Finnish orchestral music for the yle ar-chive. during the 2013/2014 season it will premiere six Finnish works commis-sioned by yle.

The Frso has recorded works by eötvös, nielsen, Hakola, lindberg, saariaho, sallinen, Kaipainen, Kokkonen and others, and the debut disc of the opera aslak Hetta by armas launis. Its discs have reaped some major distinc-tions, such as the BBC Music Magazine award and the académie Charles Cros award. The disc of the sibelius and lindberg violin concertos (sony BMg) with lisa Batiashvili as the soloist recei-ved the MIdeM Classical award in 2008,

in which year the new york Times chose the other lindberg disc as its record of the year.

The Frso regularly tours to all parts of the world. during the 2013/2014 sea-son it will be visiting Central europe un-der the baton of Hannu lintu.

all the Frso concerts both in Finland and abroad are broadcast, usually live, on yle radio 1. They can also be heard and watched with excellent stream qua-lity on yle.fi/klassinen.