“There’s nothing quite like experiencing Vänskä and the orchestra in concert. The conductor is a bouncing bundle of energy on the podium when the music reaches its energetic apex, his forceful cues seeming to set off explosions within the orchestra.” (Gramophone, 3/2022)
Canadian cellist Luka Coetzee and the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra first met in 2023 at the International Paulo Cello Competition. Even before Coetzee was announced as the winner, the orchestra’s musicians hoped they could play with the charismatic young cellist again soon. Edward Elgar’s Cello Concerto provides a suitably emotional setting for their reunion.
The punch flowed and the auditorium was filled with celebrities at the opening of Finlandia Hall in 1971, when conductor Jorma Panula and the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra premiered the First Symphony by Aulis Sallinen, who celebrated his 90th birthday this year.
The last great work by Edward Elgar (1857–1934), his Cello Concerto, dates from 1919. The premiere was a fiasco, the conductor having left too little time for its rehearsal, and audiences found the music too old-fashioned. Ernest Newman, a leading critic, nevertheless wrote that “The work itself is lovely stuff, very simple – that pregnant simplicity that has come upon Elgar’s music in the last couple of years – but with a profound wisdom and beauty underlying its simplicity.” Elgar conducted a recording of the concerto in the 1920s, and it later found a lasting place in the repertoire in the 1960s, thanks to Jacqueline du Pré.
Elgar also seems to have felt there was no place for his music in a world that had by that time abandoned tonality and melody, and at the end of the score he wrote: “Finis. R.I.P.”
The music of this four-movement concerto is so nostalgic and heart-breaking that many have tried to give it a ‘programme’. Elgar wrote it just after the end of the First World War, and some may hear it as an elegy for the world and culture destroyed by the war. Elgar also seems to have felt there was no place for his music in a world that had by that time abandoned tonality and melody, and at the end of the score he wrote: “Finis. R.I.P.”
As a student, Charles Ives (1874–1954) was obliged to master the classical European tradition when he would have preferred radical experiment and seeking a ‘true’ American idiom. His second Symphony (1902) caused him quite a headache. He withheld the score and it was not actually premiered until 1951. Listening to it on the radio, he was annoyed to hear that the conductor (Leonard Bernstein) had made some changes, but by that time he had lost interest in the whole work, claiming that it now sounded too “soft”.
The result? One of the oddest yet most entertaining works in symphonic literature.
There are five movements instead of the traditional four and the melodies contain references to ones familiar to US audiences, such as Turkey in the Straw, Camptown Races, and Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean. The Symphony also slips in some allusions to symphonies by Beethoven and Brahms, a Bach Invention and Wagner’s Tristan; Ives wished to demonstrate that combining European tradition with popular American tunes was more than possible. The result? One of the oddest yet most entertaining works in symphonic literature.
Yes, but only before or after the concert. During the concert we just want you to enjoy the music. This way you won’t disturb the musicians or other audience members.
Only the orchestra has a dress code. You can dress as you like.
You can give the ticket to a friend or donate it to a music student by calling 09-3102 2700 or sending an e-mail to helsinki.philharmonic@hel.fi by 3pm on the day of the concert.
