From the New World

Nathalie Stutzmann

“There are two types of artists,” writes French singer-conductor Nathalie Stutzmann: “Those that strive to show what they’re doing is difficult, and those who spend their life trying to make people believe it is not difficult, which is the category I belong to.” Before taking up conducting, she had already made an impressive career in opera and as a contralto specialising in works of the Baroque, French 19th-century repertoire and German Lieder. Said critic Jordan Owen, “The most elegant and articulate words fail to do justice to her performance. She is a consummate rock star on the podium. With her precise, yet large and wild articulations, she doesn’t ‘conduct’ so much as she seizes the full potential of every note and wrenches it loose from the silence that preceded it.” Now Music Director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra from the 22/23 season, Principal Guest Conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra and Chief Conductor of the Kristiansand Symphony Orchestra in Norway, Nathalie Stutzmann also has a strong reputation as an opera conductor and has done more than 80 recordings.

Matthew Hunt

“One of the top half-dozen clarinettists in the world” (The Arts Desk), Matthew Hunt is a charismatic performer who finds previously unheard tones in his instrument time and time again. He performs regularly as solo clarinettist with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen and has also performed as soloist with the chamber orchestras of the Berliner Philharmoniker and Royal Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. As a chamber musician, Hunt has developed close relationships especially with Finnish musicians, such as Pekka Kuusisto, the Meta4 quartet and Iiro Rantala.

Hunt became familiar with Max Bruch's Double Concerto as a young orchestra member and still remembers practicing it for the first time in 2001 with his roommate. “Bruch has a wonderful gift for melody. I love his pieces for this ensemble,” says Hunt. “He must have loved this combination himself. They have a very discernible emotional charge, because he writes them in perfect unison so often."

Hunt met violist Lilli Maijala more than ten years ago. They often perform together, including this year in Ernen in Switzerland and Lewis in the UK, as well as at Festival Résonances in Belgium. “It's great to play with Lilli. Although our styles are different, we play well together. For example, Bruch’s Double Concerto has a strong chamber music element, and the best thing about works like this is that you can communicate with your good friend through music.”

Hunt began his musical career at the age of six in the Lichfield Cathedral choir, singing for two hours every day – for seven years. This period defined Hunt's career and playing style to this day.

“When I play, I hear a song in my head. I imitate singers, I phrase like a singer. It's great to be able to perform in Helsinki under the leadership of one of the world's greatest singers, Nathalie Stutzmann, especially with this work, which is composed as if for two low female voices.”

Jaani Länsiö

Lilli Maijala

Finnish violist Lilli Maijala publically performs the Double Concerto by Max Bruch for the first time tonight. She is amazed that the concerto is not played more, for it is, she says, an extremely fine work, and the only unashamedly Romantic German concerto for the instrument. She got to know Matthew Hunt back in 2008 and feels it is especially important in the Bruch concerto to know both the other soloist and the orchestra, because the concerto is so operatic. “The music is like recitatives, arias and duets in which you have to spread yourself in many directions.”

Well-known in Finland and at festivals both national and international, Lilli Maijala has been a laureate of both the Nordic Viola Competition and the prestigious Munich ARD, teaches the viola at the Sibelius Academy and is a member of the newly-formed Valo Quartet. She was the soloist in the premiere of the concerto by Lauri Kilpiö and has recorded the concerto by Pēteris Vasks and the concerto for viola, double bass and chamber orchestra by P.H. Nordgren.

Jean Sibelius: Cortège

Jean Sibelius (1865–1957) composed many little but first-rate pieces either as programme fillers at concerts he was conducting or for special occasions. One of the latter was Cortège, which he wrote in 1905 for a concert on the retirement of Kaarlo Bergbom, director for many years of the forerunner of the Finnish National Theatre. Sibelius conducted the orchestra of the Helsinki Philharmonic Society (now the HPO). The piece is a cheerful polonaise that accompanied the theatre’s actors as they crossed the stage dressed as characters from some of the theatre’s most popular productions. Sibelius used some of the Cortège material for his Scènes historiques II suite and his incidental music to Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

Max Bruch: Double Concerto for Clarinet and Viola, Op. 88 (1911)

The only work for which Max Bruch (1838–1920) is widely remembered is his Violin Concerto, yet he was a prolific composer. His contemporaries sneered at him for adhering to the National-Romantic tradition instead of the fashionable Modernism, and at the age of 70 he bitterly decided to stop composing. He nevertheless went on to write two more works for his brilliant clarinettist son Max Felix. One was Eight Pieces for Clarinet, Viola and Piano and the other a Double Concerto for Clarinet and Viola. The Concerto was premiered in 1912, with Max Felix and violist Willy Hess as the soloists. Bruch then revised the score slightly and the new version was premiered the following year. It got a polite but reserved reception. The music in romantic-lyrical style contains allusions to Scandinavian folk music and the orchestra expands with each movement. In the first, the soloists are accompanied by a chamber orchestra; for the second Bruch adds, among other things, a trumpet and cor anglais, and for the finale more French horns.

Antonín Dvořák: Symphony No. 9 in E Minor, Op. 95 “From the New World”

In September 1892, Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904) arrived in the United States to take up his post as director of the New York National Conservatory. He liked the work, but was homesick, and in spring 1895 returned to Europe. His American years were nevertheless highly productive, and included the Symphony in E Minor of 1893. In a letter to his publisher he wrote: “The success of the symphony was spectacular; the papers are saying that no composer has ever achieved a triumph such as this. People applauded for so long that I had to express my appreciation like a king.” Greatly inspired by the songs and dances of the indigenous people and African Americans, Dvořák sought to capture something of their spirit in his symphony. The melody of the slow movement is, however, often regarded as an authentic spiritual, though it did not acquire words until later. It has also been claimed that some of the motifs were inspired by Longfellow’s epic Song of Hiawatha, but according to Leonard Bernstein, the symphony was composed by an Old World composer firmly rooted in the European tradition and the soundscapes of his native Bohemia.