Encounters Club – Slavic Nocturne

Czech composer Leoš Janáček (1854–1928) composed his wind sextet Mládí (“Youth”) in his mature late period at the age of 70 in his home village of Hukvaldy. The work has been interpreted as an old man's memoir of his youth. In the third movement, Janáček quotes from the work Pochod Modráčků (“March of the Bluebirds”), composed the same year, in which he recalls his youth as a choirboy at a Brno monastery: “The little singers of the monastery in their blue cassocks marched joyfully – they looked like bluebirds.” In this rarely heard work, the traditional woodwind quintet is complemented by a sixth instrument: the bass clarinet. The work seemed appropriate for the evening's concert programme, and the addition of the bass clarinet gives the otherwise rather treble-heavy ensemble a bass boost.

Witold Lutosławski (1913–1994) fled after the Warsaw Uprising in August 1944 to the town of Komorów. There, in the attic of his uncle's house, he composed his Trio for oboe, clarinet and bassoon. Lutosławski later wrote that he chose these three wind instruments because such an ensemble was “the simplest way” to realise his “research into pitch, rhythm and the organisation of sounds.”

Janáček's compatriot Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904) began composing his Nocturne as the slow movement, Andante religioso, of his early String Quartet No. 4 in E minor (1870), but eventually the Nocturne developed into an independent work for string orchestra. The work was premiered under the composer's baton at the Crystal Palace in London on 22 March 1885. This arrangement for wind sextet (flute, oboe, clarinet, French horn, bass clarinet and bassoon) is by Ville Hiilivirta and will be given its world premiere at the Encounters Club.

The popular Encounters Club is an arena for creative ideas and surprising encounters with performances by the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra’s musicians and friends.

Free admission – welcome! The programme begins at 8pm after the evening’s concert, and the café is open until 9:30pm.