Apple blossoms

Anja Bihlmaier

Anja Bihlmaier is the Chief Conductor of the Residentie Orkest in The Hague, Netherlands. From autumn 2020 to spring 2023, she served as the Principal Guest Conductor of the Lahti Symphony Orchestra in Finland. Bihlmaier broke glass ceilings as the first woman to hold these positions.

This season, Bihlmaier will debut with the Helsinki and Oslo Philharmonics and the Belgian National Orchestra, to name a few. As a guest, she returns to conduct several renowned European and Scandinavian orchestras. Besides her diverse orchestral repertoire, she is also a passionate advocate for opera, with 15 years of experience in the field.

Bihlmaier loves nature and outdoor activities, such as cycling and surfing. While jogging in Helsinki, she admired the views around the Opera House, Music Centre, and Finlandia Hall. Bihlmaier appreciates the genuinity, profoundness, and passion of Finns and considers these qualities prominent in Finnish music-making as well.

Anja Bihlmaier, born in 1978 in Germany, studied at the Freiburg Conservatory of Music and the Salzburg Mozarteum.

https://anjabihlmaier.de/en/biography/

Anu Komsi

One of Finland’s foremost international singers, Anu Komsi’s versatility, technical skill and wide-ranging repertoire have earned her critical acclaim worldwide. Komsi has worked with many of the major opera companies and festivals around the world, including Opéra National de Paris, Lucerne and Salzburg Festivals and La Scala Milan, and important orchestras such as Wiener Philharmoniker, Berliner Philharmoniker, Orchestre de Paris, BBC Symphony Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic to name a few. Throughout her eminent career, she has worked with leading conductors including Sir Roger Norrington, Sakari Oramo, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Alan Gilbert, Peter Eötvös, Andris Nelsons, Nicholas Collon, Santtu-Matias Rouvali and Dalia Stasevska.

2022/23 season highlights include Komsi’s return to Finnish National Opera as Queen of the Night Die Zauberflöte and in Kaija Saariaho’s Innocence, Magnus Lindberg’s Accused with Gürzenich-Orchester Köln, Strauss’ Four Last Songs with the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra and performances of Saariaho’s Saarikoski Songs with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and BBC Symphony Orchestra under Sakari Oramo.

https://anukomsi.fi/
 

Jukka Linkola: Tyrants don’t believe in love

Jukka Linkola (b. 1955) first became known as a jazz pianist and a composer for stage and screen, but over the past few decades he has been tending more towards classical music. He wrote Tyrants don’t believe in love for the HPO as a commission for its Helsinki Variations series in which composers choose as their source of inspiration a Finnish work written before 1945. Linkola chose The Song of the Cross-Spider (Laulu ristilukista, 1898) by Jean Sibelius. It tells of Christian II, the 16th-century tyrant who ruled over Denmark, Sweden and Norway, but its message has also been interpreted as criticism of the years when Imperial Russia still held Finland in its grip. The piece does not, says Linkola, quote from the song as such, but he wants people to just about recognise it. He calls his 15-minute piece a tone poem. When Russia attacked Ukraine, he could see in his mind’s eye the tyrant’s cold eyes, the man who deletes all around him. One of the two tender themes lingers on at the end, as evil is defeated.
 

Toivo Kuula: The Sea-Bathing Maidens

The composer of a wealth of solo and choral songs, chamber music and a couple of larger-scale works, Toivo Kuula (1883–1918) was only 34 when he was shot dead in unclear circumstances. A fervid nationalist, he had a burning desire to promote Finnish culture, and a passion for folk music and poetry in Finnish. In 1909, he made a setting for soprano and piano of a poem by Eino Leino from a collection called Helkavirret (Whit Songs). The soloist at the premiere the following year was his beloved and later second wife Alma.

The Sea-Bathing Maidens tells of a birdcatcher who sees three maidens bathing in the sea. They are bird-like figures who have shed their feathers before going for a swim. The man steals the feathers of one and demands a kiss in return for giving them back. A kiss he gets, but the consequences are disastrous.
 

Oskar Merikanto: Three songs

“Out with the old and in with the new!” cried the young Finnish modernists, looking askance at composers such as Oskar Merikanto (1868–1924). They dismissed his music as being melodic, simple and appealing to the masses, when it should have been challenging, dissonant and experimental. Yet the music of Merikanto is still as popular as ever, while many of the Finnish modernists’ works are now mere curiosities. Though best known for his songs, Oskar Merikanto also wrote three operas, cantatas, and pieces for piano and organ. He was an eminent organist, a conductor and critic. Tonight’s three songs are settings of poems by Eino Leino (Omenankukat/Apple Blossoms, 1905), Jooseppi Mustakallio (Pai, pai, paitaressu/Go to Sleep my Darling, 1887) and Hilja Haahti (Kun päivä paistaa/When the Sun Shines, 1897). The first is romantic, the second in the nature of a folk song, and the third bursting with naïve but fetching positivity.
 

Johannes Brahms: Symphony No. 1 in C Minor, Op. 68

Being hailed by his friend Robert Schumann in an article published in 1853 as the great successor to Beethoven was, for Johannes Brahms (1833–1897), stressful to say the least. People began to expect too much of him; he suffered from some degree of composer’s block and did not feel sufficiently confident to release his first symphony until he had spent 20 years working on it. “You have no idea of how it feels – always to hear the tramp of such a giant [Beethoven] behind you,” he said. The premiere in Karlsruhe in 1876 with Otto Dessoff conducting was eventually a tremendous success. But to Brahms’s mortification, people began calling the symphony “Beethoven’s tenth”, and likening the hymn theme in the finale to the Ode to Joy in Beethoven’s ninth. “Any ass can hear that,” quipped Brahms. But when all is said and done, the symphony is clearly indebted to Beethoven. A parallel may, for example, be drawn between the older master’s Fate Symphony and the journey from gloomy minor to triumphant major.