Rosenkavalier

Nuno Coelho

Portuguese conductor Nuno Coelho tonight makes his debut with the HPO but his diary has long been filled with bookings from orchestras as far apart as Argentina and China, Mexico, Japan and Europe. Winner of numerous prizes, crowned by victory in the Cadaqués International Conducting Competition in 2017, Coelho did not initially plan to become a conductor, and was ten before he took up an instrument, the violin. While studying this in Brussels, he nevertheless had to choose a subsidiary subject and thought a knowledge of conducting might be useful in his future career. This he then went on to study with Johannes Schlaefli in Zurich and before making his breakthrough was Assistant Conductor of the Netherlands Philharmonic 2015–2017; he has also been assistant to such maestros as Gustavo Dudamel, Bernard Haitink and Andris Nelsons, and to our own Susanna Mälkki. Coelho also conducts opera and is currently Guest Conductor of the Gulbenkian Orchestra.

Eric Lu 

Born in Bedford, Massachusetts, to Chinese-Taiwanese parents, Eric Lu (b. 1997) is one of the most talked about pianists and acclaimed Chopin specialists in recent years. He has given recitals all over the world, from São Paulo to Singapore, and as a soloist with the likes of the Detroit and Seattle symphony orchestras and the Royal Stockholm, Los Angeles and BBC Philharmonic orchestras. He performed as the soloist with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra at the Helsinki Music Centre in autumn 2021 and just last week as the soloist with the Tapiola Sinfonietta in Espoo. Today marks his debut with the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra.

Lu’s international concert career began in earnest after he won first prize at the Leeds International Piano Competition in 2018, the first American to do so in almost 50 years. In the competition, Lu played Chopin's Piano Sonata No. 2 and Ballade No. 4, among others. Lu’s technical skills and emotional depth were already noticed in 2015, when he won fourth prize at the International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw, Poland. For his final piece in that competition, he played the same Piano Concerto in E minor that he will be performing this evening. Prior to that, he won Chopin competitions in both Moscow and Miami.

Chopin’s concerto was one of the first pieces the composer ever heard: “I was blown away,” he recalls. “It was so touching. I couldn't imagine writing such beautiful and passionate music.”

Lu started playing the piano at the age of five and knew early on that he wanted to be a professional musician. He began his official studies at the New England Conservatory and continued at the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia under Jonathan Biss and Robert McDonald. His teachers also included Dang Thai Son, the first Asian to win the Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw.

Jaani Länsiö 

Antonín Dvořák: Othello, Overture

Having composed a giant Requiem – purely as an exercise or study of the genre, and not dedicated to any particular person – Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904) turned his back on death in favour of life in the form of three orchestral overtures: Nature, Life and Love. The first is a blissful portrait of paradise, the second (Carnival) a joyful, carefree scene, and the third a tragedy. Though originally intended as a trilogy, the three overtures were later published as separate opus numbers.

Dvořák had thought to call the third part Tragic Overture or Eroica, but finally chose to name it after Shakespeare’s great tragedy, Othello. The story tells of the evil Iago and the lovers Desdemona and Othello. Iago tries to cause a rift between the star-stuck lovers and succeeds in making Othello doubt his beloved. Othello kills her in a fit of jealousy, but on learning that she was in fact innocent and the victim of a cunning plot, he commits suicide.

Frédéric Chopin: Piano Concerto No. 1 in E Minor, Op. 11

Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849) was a Polish master of the small-scale genre: ballads, nocturnes, polonaises, etudes and mazurkas. He did, however, also compose three piano sonatas, a piano trio, a cello sonata, and at the age of barely 20 two piano concertos. The virtuoso cult of the 19th century favoured musicians who also composed works designed to dazzle their audience, and Chopin wrote his concertos to boost his career abroad. His Concerto in E Minor got an enthusiastic reception, both at its premiere in Warsaw in 1830 and a couple of weeks later in Paris. “There is spirit in these melodies, there is fantasy in these passages, and everywhere there is originality,” wrote one French critic. Of the second movement Chopin wrote to a friend: “It is rather a Romance, calm and melancholy, giving the impression of someone looking gently towards a spot that calls to mind a thousand happy memories. It is a kind of reverie in the moonlight on a beautiful spring evening.” The slow Romance is framed by a weighty first movement and a playful Rondo.

Miroslav Srnka: Tak klid

A leading contemporary Czech composer, Miroslav Srnka (b. 1975) has been the winner of many awards and had works performed by both contemporary ensembles and traditional symphony orchestras. He refuses to comment on the content of his works, as he does not wish to guide the listening experience. The only permanent thing is the title.

Tak klid (2005, meaning ‘Quiet Now’) was inspired by the letters of fellow Czech Leoš Janáček (1854–1928) to his 38-years-younger muse Kamila Stösslová. Over a period of ten years, he wrote her more than 700 letters, though she seldom replied. When his wife Zdeňka got news of her husband’s correspondence, he wrote:

“Dear Kamila! Quiet now…By nature a passionate man, I am naturally looking for, in need of, a soul who has some warmth of feeling and compassion. Fate brought you across my path – and I hold those times within me; I embrace them, take comfort from them. There is nothing wrong in that; does it make me a bad person? […] Condemn me, if you will. My life will go on in the same way “smilingly” onwards. You are far away from me, but the closest thing to my heart.”

Richard Strauss: Der Rosenkavalier Suite

The opera Der Rosenkavalier (The Knight of the Rose) by Richard Strauss (1874–1949), to a libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, was an immediate success, running to no fewer than 50 performances in the year (1911) it was premiered alone in Dresden. Even Rosenkavalier trains were put on, in which passengers could puff away at Rosenkavalier cigars while sipping Rosenkavalier champagne. Der Rosenkavalier had been preceded by two operas, Salome and Elektra, in which Strauss had experimented with bold, new harmonies, but this third one reverted to more familiar strains. It tells a complicated tale of seduction, disguise, misunderstanding, mishap and intrigue and is set in Vienna in the 1750s. It is famous for its ‘Viennese waltzes’, though at the time the events took place, the genre would not be ‘invented’ for another hundred years or so. A ‘best of’ suite of numbers from the opera was made with Strauss’s permission in 1945. One of the focal elements of the plot is a silver rose, here represented by a tinkling, chromatic motif.