wounds

Into the Distance

26 years old, and just married to a woman who is an avowed Fennoman (a Finland enthusiast), young Jean Sibelius starts composing his first tone poem. Rather than following a specific musical road map, his En saga is more of a fairy tale of mystic landscapes. It shows vast surfaces of sound, subdued melancholy, and here and there, cheerful trolls pop up for a perky little dance. Incidentally, the first sketches to this piece were made in Austria, where Sibelius, the composer with the Swedish accent, spent his time in Viennese coffee houses, reading the Finnish national epic, the Kalewala. »I never felt more Finnish than in Vienna, Italy and Paris.« In Kaija Saariaho’s case, the musical approach to the five poems by her compatriot Pentti Saarikoski had little to do with Finnish national romanticism but more with the urge to explore the art of composing. Saariaho, who passed away in 2023, had originally set the work for soprano and piano, and the Gürzenich Orchestra now examines the orchestral version. In the very first poem, The Face of Nature, the composer’s musical language builds bridges to Jean Sibelius, while Sumun läpi – Through the mist – explores impenetrable, mysterious worlds of sound. The soloist in this performance is a longtime artistic companion of Saariaho, the singer Anu Komsi. Whoever tries to spot British sounding melodies in Dvořák’s »English« symphony, his 8th, will most certainly be disappointed. The Czech composer merely switched to a British publisher for this buoyant work, hence the misleading title. The symphony is bold, and vigorously joyful. It has an introspective beginning, but after less than a minute, the atmosphere takes a turn for the jubilant, culminating in a finale with festive, beaming fanfares. Antonín Dvořák is on the fast lane to success: »You want to know what I do? My head is full – if only one could write everything down immediately! […] The ease exceeds all expectations and the melodies just keep coming.

Into the Distance

26 years old, and just married to a woman who is an avowed Fennoman (a Finland enthusiast), young Jean Sibelius starts composing his first tone poem. Rather than following a specific musical road map, his En saga is more of a fairy tale of mystic landscapes. It shows vast surfaces of sound, subdued melancholy, and here and there, cheerful trolls pop up for a perky little dance. Incidentally, the first sketches to this piece were made in Austria, where Sibelius, the composer with the Swedish accent, spent his time in Viennese coffee houses, reading the Finnish national epic, the Kalewala. »I never felt more Finnish than in Vienna, Italy and Paris.« In Kaija Saariaho’s case, the musical approach to the five poems by her compatriot Pentti Saarikoski had little to do with Finnish national romanticism but more with the urge to explore the art of composing. Saariaho, who passed away in 2023, had originally set the work for soprano and piano, and the Gürzenich Orchestra now examines the orchestral version. In the very first poem, The Face of Nature, the composer’s musical language builds bridges to Jean Sibelius, while Sumun läpi – Through the mist – explores impenetrable, mysterious worlds of sound. The soloist in this performance is a longtime artistic companion of Saariaho, the singer Anu Komsi. Whoever tries to spot British sounding melodies in Dvořák’s »English« symphony, his 8th, will most certainly be disappointed. The Czech composer merely switched to a British publisher for this buoyant work, hence the misleading title. The symphony is bold, and vigorously joyful. It has an introspective beginning, but after less than a minute, the atmosphere takes a turn for the jubilant, culminating in a finale with festive, beaming fanfares. Antonín Dvořák is on the fast lane to success: »You want to know what I do? My head is full – if only one could write everything down immediately! […] The ease exceeds all expectations and the melodies just keep coming.

Bock auf Klassik?!

Sir John Eliot Gardiner

“From the heart, may it again go to the heart.” Thus Beethoven wrote at the head of the Kyrie in his Missa solemnis. Shortly before completing the work he called it the greatest he had ever written. This monumental yet enigmatic masterpiece of sacred music is less a strictly liturgical composition than a vehicle for kindling authentic religious feelings in the listeners. His Mass thus bespeaks a thoroughly Enlightenment view of religion; it also reveals a sense of drama, as when the final plea for peace, “Dona nobis pacem”, is preceded by vivid scenes of war. In John Eliot Gardiner a conductor steps up to the BRSO rostrum who has often plunged into the gigantic cosmos of the Missa solemnis in concerts and recordings, probing the field of tension between faith and emotionalism that goes directly to the heart.

Sir John Eliot Gardiner

“From the heart, may it again go to the heart.” Thus Beethoven wrote at the head of the Kyrie in his Missa solemnis. Shortly before completing the work he called it the greatest he had ever written. This monumental yet enigmatic masterpiece of sacred music is less a strictly liturgical composition than a vehicle for kindling authentic religious feelings in the listeners. His Mass thus bespeaks a thoroughly Enlightenment view of religion; it also reveals a sense of drama, as when the final plea for peace, “Dona nobis pacem”, is preceded by vivid scenes of war. In John Eliot Gardiner a conductor steps up to the BRSO rostrum who has often plunged into the gigantic cosmos of the Missa solemnis in concerts and recordings, probing the field of tension between faith and emotionalism that goes directly to the heart.

Sir John Eliot Gardiner

“From the heart, may it again go to the heart.” Thus Beethoven wrote at the head of the Kyrie in his Missa solemnis. Shortly before completing the work he called it the greatest he had ever written. This monumental yet enigmatic masterpiece of sacred music is less a strictly liturgical composition than a vehicle for kindling authentic religious feelings in the listeners. His Mass thus bespeaks a thoroughly Enlightenment view of religion; it also reveals a sense of drama, as when the final plea for peace, “Dona nobis pacem”, is preceded by vivid scenes of war. In John Eliot Gardiner a conductor steps up to the BRSO rostrum who has often plunged into the gigantic cosmos of the Missa solemnis in concerts and recordings, probing the field of tension between faith and emotionalism that goes directly to the heart.

Philippe Jordan

In his début at the helm of the BRSO Philippe Jordan, the music director of the Vienna State Opera since 2020, devotes himself to life’s dark side and a theme from world literature that has held composers spellbound time and time again: Faust. Franz Liszt, in the three movements of his Faust Symphony, delineates character studies of the three main figures – Faust, Gretchen and Mephistopheles. His symphony culminate in a mystical finale with chorus and solo tenor, invoking the power of forgiveness through what Goethe called “the eternal feminine”. Wagner’s Faust Overture, on the other hand, is limited to the title figure, its sustained tempo describing his loneliness in his solitary study. Rounding off the programme is Liszt’s Danse macabre (Totentanz), a paraphrase on the Dies irae motif that is by turns apocalyptic, macabre and grotesque. Here, too, we hear the Faustian contest between Heaven and Hell.

Philippe Jordan

In his début at the helm of the BRSO Philippe Jordan, the music director of the Vienna State Opera since 2020, devotes himself to life’s dark side and a theme from world literature that has held composers spellbound time and time again: Faust. Franz Liszt, in the three movements of his Faust Symphony, delineates character studies of the three main figures – Faust, Gretchen and Mephistopheles. His symphony culminate in a mystical finale with chorus and solo tenor, invoking the power of forgiveness through what Goethe called “the eternal feminine”. Wagner’s Faust Overture, on the other hand, is limited to the title figure, its sustained tempo describing his loneliness in his solitary study. Rounding off the programme is Liszt’s Danse macabre (Totentanz), a paraphrase on the Dies irae motif that is by turns apocalyptic, macabre and grotesque. Here, too, we hear the Faustian contest between Heaven and Hell.

Klaus Mäkelä & Frank Peter Zimmermann

A programme with three works requiring solo singers is certainly something special – so that Frank Peter Zimmermann has brought along two pieces never heard before in the concerts of the BRSO: Bartók’s roughly ten-minute Rhapsody No. 2 for violin and orchestra (1928) and Martinů’s Suite concertante (1944), a four-movement violin concerto in everything but name. Both works thrive on the tension between original eastern European folk melodies, modern sonic garb and the unique individual styles of their respective creators. A folk inflection of a quite different kind depicts the “heavenly joys” that soprano Anna Lucia Richter invokes in the final movement of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony. But the childlike naivety of this idyll openly displays its fractures, and perhaps no Mahler symphony is as enigmatic as his purportedly “simple” Fourth. Standing at the rostrum is the young Finnish conductor Klaus Mäkelä, now in his second appearance with the BRSO following his début of February 2020.

Klaus Mäkelä & Frank Peter Zimmermann

A programme with three works requiring solo singers is certainly something special – so that Frank Peter Zimmermann has brought along two pieces never heard before in the concerts of the BRSO: Bartók’s roughly ten-minute Rhapsody No. 2 for violin and orchestra (1928) and Martinů’s Suite concertante (1944), a four-movement violin concerto in everything but name. Both works thrive on the tension between original eastern European folk melodies, modern sonic garb and the unique individual styles of their respective creators. A folk inflection of a quite different kind depicts the “heavenly joys” that soprano Anna Lucia Richter invokes in the final movement of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony. But the childlike naivety of this idyll openly displays its fractures, and perhaps no Mahler symphony is as enigmatic as his purportedly “simple” Fourth. Standing at the rostrum is the young Finnish conductor Klaus Mäkelä, now in his second appearance with the BRSO following his début of February 2020.