Finnish Rhapsody

Chloé Dufresne

Chloé Dufresne has shot to fame since winning the first and audience prizes in the prestigious Besançon Competition for conductors and other accolades. She was recently awarded a Dudamel Fellowship with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. Beginning her conducting studies in Montpellier, she continued in Paris and from 2015 to 2020 at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. Empathy, and the ability to listen are, she says, vitally important in a conductor. “Even if you have a keen ear, you must of course be able to envisage works as a whole. I came to conducting quite late and developed a style of my own before looking to see how others do it. Above all I’ve been inspired by the conductors I’ve met in Finland, Hannu Lintu, Susanna Mälkki, and my teacher Sakari Oramo.”

One of Chloé Dufresne’s most memorable recent events was conducting the Orchestre national de France for a recording of the Marseillaise for the handover ceremony of the Olympic Games Tokyo 2021 – Paris 2024. The young French conductor makes her HPO debut tonight but previously conducted The Ring for children at the 2019 Helsinki Festival.

Heini Kärkkäinen

Heini Kärkkäinen specialises in lesser-known concertos and contemporary music, premiering works by, among others, many fellow Finns. Today she gives her first public performance of the piano concerto by Laura Netzel. “Her name was familiar to me, but I’d never heard the concerto,” she says. “This time I got to know it by listening to a recording, though I usually begin with the score. I like the concerto a lot. I can detect a certain Slav melancholy, but also bubbly French sparkle, passion, and a wealth of detail. Grieg, Chopinic poetry and a typical Rachmaninov flow, yet it’s utterly original and anything but imitation music.”

“I could not live without music,” adds this laureate of piano competitions both national and international. “It’s such a strong inner passion that I feel compelled to share it and to give performances people will remember. Music has the power to create lasting emotional experiences in a world in which so much is meaningless.” Heini Kärkkäinen is director of the Tampere Chamber Music Festival focusing on music and well-being.

Robert Kajanus: Finnish Rhapsody No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 5

Founder and conductor of the orchestra now known as the Helsinki Philharmonic and all in all a leading figure in Finnish musical life for nearly half a century, Robert Kajanus (1856–1933) also found a little time to compose – pieces for orchestra, works for choir and orchestra, chamber and piano repertoire, and solo songs – in the Romantic tradition. It was his orchestra that premiered many of the works by his close friend Jean Sibelius. His two Finnish Rhapsodies for orchestra (of 1881 and 1886) draw on the folk music of his native Finland, as suggested by his Norwegian colleague Johan Svendsen (himself the composer of four Norwegian Rhapsodies). The first incorporates the melody of the folk song En voi sua unhoittaa poies (I cannot forget thee) and was premiered in Dresden with Kajanus conducting in 1881 and in Finland two years later. The forerunner of the HPO took it to the Paris World Expo in 1900.

Laura Netzel: Piano Concerto in E Minor, Op. 84

Laura Netzel (1839–1927) was born in Finland, the daughter of aristocratic parents who moved to Sweden early in her life. She made a name for herself as a pianist while still in her teens but went on to become a composer, harpist, singer and conductor; she was celebrated across Europe and was honoured with the Ordre des Palmes académiques in France. Her most ambitious work, the Piano Concerto, dates from 1897. It was performed on two pianos in Paris in 1897 and Berlin in 1898 but she never lived to hear the orchestral version. Not until 2020 was the full version performed, by the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra. The soloist was Peter Friis Johansson, who had completed the final section missing from the manuscript. Tonight’s performance uses the final section completed by Petteri Nieminen here in Finland. The solo part in this concerto in the Romantic tradition is clearly the work of a brilliant pianist.

Robert Schumann: Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major, “Rhenish”, Op. 97

Following a visit to Cologne, Robert Schumann (1810–1856) immediately set about composing a symphony inspired by the mighty river on which that city stands. It got an excellent reception, but his work as a conductor and director of music in Düsseldorf was not going as he wished; he became depressed and in February 1854 tried to drown himself in the Rhine. Though rescued, he was committed to a mental asylum and died two years later.

When published, the symphony became known as the Rhenish and it combines a Romantic sense of freedom with a classical idiom. The rhythms and melodies are allowed to go their own way, but only within strict structural confines. The symphony is unusual for the times in that it has five movements; Schumann was possibly influenced here by Beethoven’s Pastoral and both reflect the feelings aroused by nature and particular landscapes. Schumann originally called the second movement “Morning on the Rhine”, and the fourth was aroused by a procession he watched in Cologne Cathedral.