The works of composer Galina Ustvolskaya were widely featured in concert repertoires and recordings in the first half of the 1990s. Alex Ross, music critic for the New York Times, covered the phenomenon in 1995 with the headline “A Grand Russian Original Steps Out Of The Mist”. The works of the “Lady with the Hammer” have been described as “black holes in music”, “musical laser beams” and “cosmic metal”, and her melodic language is characterised by extreme uncompromisingness and extreme powers. "She is the link between Shostakovich and Sofia Gubaidulina with all romanticism removed.”
Composer Sofia Gubaidulina, violinist Gidon Kremer and violin concerto Offertorium have travelled a long road together from behind the Iron Curtain to the world's concert stages. “I have been privileged to know Sofia for more than 35 years. Each performance of her music has enriched my life as an artist and as a human being,” says Kremer. (The Strad)
Jan Söderblom
Aside from solo appearances at a young age, successful touring with New Helsinki Quartet and his growing interest towards orchestral musicianship built the foundation for Jan Söderblom's versatile and innovative career. Conductor studies at Sibelius Academy (1997–2001) led to intensive projects with Finnish as well as other top orchestras. Söderblom has since conducted orchestras such as Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, Tampere Filharmonic Orchestra, Lahti Symphony Orchestra, Tapiola Sinfonietta, Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra Avanti!, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, Orquesta RTVE, Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie, MDR Sinfonieorkester (Leipzig), Danish National Chamber Orchestra, Norwegian Chamber Orchestra KORK, Norrköping and Helsingborg Symphony Orchestras and Orchestra National Bordeaux Aquitane. During 2001-2008 Söderblom served as Artistic Director of Lappeenranta City Orchestra. From 2012 to 2016 Söderblom was the conductor of Pori Sinfonietta.
In the Swedish Royal Opera Söderblom has conducted The Makropoulos Affair by Leoš Janáček as well as two first performances, Sport och fritid (2005) by Thomas Jennefelt and, in cooperation with Norrlandsoperan, Svall (2006) by Daniel Börtz. He also conducted the much talked about first performance of Veli-Matti Puumala's opera Anna Liisa at Helsinki Festival in 2008. Söderblom has conducted several ballet productions at Finnish National Opera, as well as Fredrik Pacius' opera Kung Karls jakt.
Before his career as conductor took off, Söderblom performed as a violinist, mainly with New Helsinki Quartet (1982–2001). After the quartet won competitions of Viitasaari, Concertino Praga and second prize in the London String Quartet Competition, they toured widely and performed in e.g. Wigmore Hall, Tonhalle Zürich, Herkules Saal in Munich, Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and Konzerthaus in Berlin. As a soloist he has shared the stage with several Finnish orchestras as well as e.g. Swedish Radio Orchestra, Norwegian Radio Orchestra, Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra, Japan Philharmonic Orchestra and many others.
Söderblom started as artistic director of the Finnish chamber orchestra in 2021. Previously he has been the Artistic Director of several Finnish music festivals; these days he is in charge of the artistic planning of the The ekenäs summer concerts, and the festivals in Grankulla and Ingå.
Söderblom has played as guest concertmaster for several orchestras and joined e.g. Camerata Salzburg and the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra on stage as guest member. Since 2014 Söderblom is the first concertmaster of the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra.
Jan Söderblom enjoys silence and nature and currently resides with his family in the artisan and artist community of Fiskars in Southern Finland.
www.jansoderblom.fi
Gidon Kremer
Gidon Kremer (born Gidons Krēmers in Latvia in 1947) is one of the last giants of the Soviet-Russian violin school. After studies with his father, grandfather and at the Riga Music School, he became a pupil of the legendary David Oistrakh at the Moscow Conservatory. Victory in the Tchaikovsky Competition in 1970 was preceded by numerous prizes in competitions both national and international.
The name of Kremer is inseparably linked with Gubaidulina’s Offertorium. It was he who proposed the concerto, and she composed it specifically with him in mind as the soloist. And it is thanks to him that the international community finally became aware of her name this side of the Iron Curtain. Kremer’s performance of the concerto with the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Charles Dutoit (1989) is one of the great classics in the history of music recording.
Galina Ustvolskaya: Symphonic Poem No. 2
A pupil of Dmitri Shostakovich and something of a cult figure in her then Soviet homeland, Galina Ustvolskaya (1919–2006) cared little for publicity and disliked talking about her works. Her ‘true’ music was uncompromisingly modernist – discordant, monomaniacal and loud – but she also composed works in a more easily accessible style to avoid being branded as formalist. Hence her official personal catalogue ran to only 21 works and did not include the ‘popular’ ones (such as The Dream of Stepan Razin and Young Pioneers designed to meet the regime’s demand for social realism). She composed The Hero’s Achievement for a national competition and it won second prize (no first was awarded). Later renamed Symphonic Poem No. 2, it describes the hero’s spiritual process, she said. In satisfying his desire for adventure, he experiences a spiritual transfiguration. The work was premiered in Leningrad in 1957.
Sofia Gubaidulina: Offertorium
It was with the violin concerto Offertorium dedicated to Gidon Kremer that Sofia Gubaidulina (b. 1931) made her international breakthrough. She had composed it at Kremer’s suggestion, but by the time it was ready, he had defected to the West and could not be the soloist at a premiere in the Soviet Union. Her publisher nevertheless managed to smuggle the score to the West, where it was premiered in Vienna in 1981 – naturally with Kremer as the soloist.
Gubaidulina was deeply religious, and this is reflected in the very title of the concerto. The Offertorium is part of the Catholic Mass, and the idea of sacrifice may here be taken as, say, that of Christ on the cross. The main theme of the concerto is, further, ‘sacrificed’ in order that it may experience ‘resurrection’. The theme is not Gubaidulina’s own: it is the one given to Johann Sebastian Bach by Frederick the Great and used by Bach in his Musikalisches Opfer.
Jean Sibelius: Symphony No. 1 in E Minor, Op. 39
The premiere by the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra of the Symphony No.1 by Jean Sibelius (1865–1957) in 1899 was overshadowed by two other works on the programme, The Wood-Nymph (Skogsrået) and The Song of the Athenians. The latter, in particular, was a huge success, commenting as it did on Russia’s oppression of its little Grand Duchy, Finland and the Finns’ growing striving for the political independence that would not be achieved until 1917.
At least one critic in the 1899 audience also found the symphony a little difficult to understand. Sibelius had become something of a national hero with his Kullervo symphony premiered in 1892, and the audience expected something similar. Sibelius then revised his symphony and it was on the programme for the HPO conducted by Robert Kajanus on its tour to the Universal Exposition in Paris in 1900. Some may detect echoes of the late-Romantic Tchaikovsky, but the music of Sibelius is more rugged and laconic.
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