The concert evening kicks off with Anna Clyne's Masquerade, which is influenced by 18th-century London pleasure gardens: acrobats, exotic street performers, masqueraders, dancers. Karen Gomyo is “deeply serious, temperamental and just plain gorgeous… always with a clear sense of the music’s rhythmic pulse and sonic perspectives.” (Toronto Globe & Mail) Beneath the bright tonality of Prokofiev's Seventh Symphony hides a mournful undertone.
Though now resident in the USA, Anna Clyne (the HPO’s Composer-in-Residence in the 2023/2024 season) was the world’s most-in-demand British woman composer in 2022. She composed the short Masquerade inspired by the concerts held in pleasure gardens in the 18th century and it was premiered at the London Proms in 2013. ‘As is true today,’ she says, ‘these concerts were a place where people from all walks of life mingled to enjoy a wide array of music. Other forms of entertainment ranged from the sedate to the salacious with acrobatics, exotic street entertainers, dancers, fireworks and masquerades. I am fascinated by the historic and sociological courtship between music and dance. Combined with costumes, masked guises and elaborate settings, masquerades created an exciting, yet controlled, sense of occasion and celebration. It is this that I wish to evoke in Masquerade.’
The name Philip Glass (b. 1937) is perhaps best associated with music marked by the slow repetition of little motifs – minimalism – though he himself preferred to speak of ‘music with repetitive structures’. He has composed 14 symphonies, 15 operas, 12 solo concertos (two for violin, the first in 1987 and the second in 2009), 9 string quartets, a host of piano pieces and the scores for many films.
Glass originally planned to write a violin concerto in five movements but ended up with just three. He wanted to write a work his late father would have liked, describing his father as ‘a very smart nice man who had no education in music whatsoever, but the kind of person who fills up concert halls’. The premiere in New York got an excellent reception and the concerto was soon being performed all over the world. The basic mood is brooding, in a rich and varied weave marked by polyrhythms and ostinatos. The legato solo lines are openly romantic, and the arpeggio figures that are Glass’s trademark are very much in evidence.
Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953) was, like many others, the victim of the ‘formalism jihad’ imposed by the Soviet regime in the 1940s. He was dismissed as ‘decadent’ and his compositions were banned. In time he sent a letter of apology and the Children’s Division of the State Radio commissioned him to write a symphony that was premiered to great critical acclaim in 1952. The music is melodic and easy on the ear, partly because it was designed for a young audience, but the hints of nostalgia may nevertheless reflect a need to escape from the intolerable reality of his life.
The first movement is lyrical, the second a whirling waltz. The theme of the beautiful third movement is from the incidental music he composed for Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin. Two versions exist of the final coda. The first suddenly switches back to the world of the first movement and ends on a quiet, fairytale-like note, but he was later told to end the symphony with a bang. He did as he was told, but privately told Rostropovich the cellist, “You must take care that this new ending never exists after me.”
Violinist Karen Gomyo (born 1982) performs as a soloist with orchestras and appears as a recitalist and chamber musician worldwide. Passionate about contemporary music, she has given world premieres of works by composers Samuel Adams, Samy Moussa, and Xi Wang, collaborating with the Chicago, Dallas, and Pittsburgh symphony orchestras. With the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra in Musiikkitalo, Gomyo plays in the first Finnish performance of Anna Clyne’s Masquerade.
Before her November trip to Finland, Gomyo tours Australasia in the autumn, returning to the Singapore, Melbourne, Sydney, Tasmanian, and West Australian symphony orchestras. Recent highlights in Gomyo’s career include debuts with Rome’s Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Orquesta Nacional de España, and the New York Philharmonic.
Gomyo was born in Japan and raised in Canada. From 1993 to 2001, she studied in New York at The Juilliard School, from 2001 to 2002 at Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, and from 2002 with Donald Weilerstein at the New England Conservatory, graduating in 2007.
Anna-Maria Helsing (born 1971) has been Chief Conductor of the BBC Concert Orchestra in London since October 2023. Prior to this, she served as Principal Guest Conductor of the orchestra from 2020. Originating from Ostrobothnia, Finland, Helsing is Artistic Director of the Rusk Chamber Music Festival in Jakobstad. From 2025 to 2028, she will also be Chief Conductor of the Vaasa City Orchestra.
Anna-Maria Helsing began her career as a violinist. In 1999, she won First Prize in the International Competition for 20th Century Music for Young Artists in Warsaw, Poland. After completing her orchestral conducting studies with Leif Segerstam at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, she was selected to participate in the International Conductors’ Academy of the Allianz Cultural Foundation, guided by Esa-Pekka Salonen and Gustavo Dudamel. Additionally, Helsing has attended masterclasses with John Carewe, Vladimir Jurowski, and Jorma Panula. From 2010 to 2013, Helsing was Chief Conductor of the Oulu Symphony, the first female conductor to lead a Finnish symphony orchestra.
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.
