Angel of Light

Hannu Lintu

Hannu Lintu, born in 1967, is a renowned Finnish conductor and the current Chief Conductor of the Finnish National Opera and Ballet. He studied cello and piano at the Sibelius Academy before pursuing conducting at the same academy and winning the first prize at the Nordic Conducting Competition in Bergen in 1994. Lintu has had an illustrious career, serving as the Chief Conductor of the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra from 2013 to 2021. In the 2022/23 season, he has guest appearances lined up, including his highly anticipated debut with the New York Philharmonic, as well as performances with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, and Swedish Radio Symphony orchestras, among others.

As of autumn 2023, Hannu Lintu will start a four-year term as the Principal Conductor of the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian's orchestra and choir. Lintu's tenure with the Finnish National Opera and Ballet began in 2022, and he has received critical acclaim for his innovative approach and distinctive style. Hannu Lintu is undoubtedly one of the most talented conductors of his generation.

http://www.hannulintu.fi/

Ilya Gringolts

Ilya Gringolts (born 1982) is a Russian-born violinist based in Zurich, Switzerland. He is recognized as one of the world's leading violin soloists. He is the youngest ever to have won the International Violin Competition Premio Paganini. Gringolts is a professor at the Zurich University of the Arts and appointed to the Accademia Chigiana in Siena, Italy.

Gringolts performs both the great orchestral repertoire and chamber music, as well as contemporary and rare works. He is also interested in historical performance practices. According to The Guardian, he has been called "a phenomenal violinist with one of the most curious brains in the violin world."

In the 2022/23 season, Gringolts appears as a soloist with several renowned orchestras around the globe. In February, he led the Australian Chamber Orchestra on an extensive eastern seaboard tour, playing the soloist's part for Frank Martin's Polyptyque, which will now be performed at the Helsinki Music Centre. Reviews of Gringolts' Polyptyque interpretations in Australia praised his virtuosity, describing the performance for example as "an all-too-brief journey" and ”an experience to treasure.”

https://www.ilyagringolts.org/
 

Richard Wagner: Prelude and the Good Friday Spell from Parsifal

Parsifal was to be the last opera composed by Richard Wagner (1813–1883). He designed it specifically for his own Bayreuth opera house and decreed that it was not to be performed anywhere else (a condition that was subsequently waived). The story is based on the medieval epic Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach (c. 1160–c. 1220) and tells of the knight of that name and his quest for the Holy Grail that, according to legend, bore the blood of the dying Christ.

As in the overtures to Wagner’s other operas, the Prelude to Parsifal presents the opera’s main motifs, in this case Communion, the Grail, and Faith, and within these the wound, the anguish of sin and others. The Good Friday Spell is from Act III, when Parsifal has been anointed leader of the Knights of the Grail. The mood is solemn and devout in the face of the Great Mystery.
 

Frank Martin: Polyptyque for Violin and Two String Orchestras

Harpsichordist, pianist, conductor and composer, Frank Martin (1890–1974) was Swiss but spent the last decades of his life in The Netherlands. Born into a Calvinist family, he wrote various works reflecting his unswerving faith, and many regard his late Polyptyque (1973) as the most powerful religious work of the 20th century. It was inspired by a polyptych – a religious painting in several panels – he saw in Siena. Martin’s work is in six sections or images following the Easter events from Palm Sunday to the Resurrection. The solo violin (played by Yehudi Menuhin at the premiere) represents both Christ and the Evangelist carrying the story forwards. As in Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, which Martin had heard when he was 11 and that haunted him forever after, the string orchestras express the Disciples and the crowds that first joyfully hailed Jesus’s arrival in Jerusalem and then demanded his crucifixion. The fourth movement alludes to Bach’s famous Chaconne for solo violin.
 

Einojuhani Rautavaara: Symphony No. 7 “Angel of Light”

The seventh symphony, Angel of Light, by Einojuhani Rautavaara (1928–2016) is part of a series of orchestral works each with the word ‘angel’ in the title or subtitle. These angels are not fairytale figures; they reside in the age-old tradition of humankind. The kitsch image of angels as blondes in nightdresses with the wings of a swan is so ingrained that the world of fantasy behind the ‘angel series’ has tended to be misunderstood. For Rautavaara’s angels were akin to the terrifying, masculine figures bursting with saintly fury of Rainer Maria Rilke. The ‘angel’ works do not have a ‘programme’; they are absolute music.

The calm, epic story of the first movement twice culminates in a hymn motif that really does seem to have wings. This paves the way for the second movement that erupts in many directions in rapidly changing textures until the mood of expectation leads straight into the third, slow movement marked come un sogno – like a dream. The closing movement is finally announced by pillar chords on the brass, from which the strings begin to spin a singing recitation. Rising higher and higher towards the light, it gradually pulls the orchestra with it until, having reached the apex, it finds tranquillity in a variation on the hymn motif in broad, melodic spans.