Saraste & Jumppanen

Jukka-Pekka Saraste

Jukka-Pekka Saraste (b. 1956) is the chief conductor of the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra for the next three-year period. Saraste succeeds Susanna Mälkki, whose term as the chief conductor of the HPO ends after spring 2023. Known for his versatility and exceptional musical abilities, Saraste has previously worked as the chief conductor of the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne, and the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra. Throughout his career, he has been a regular guest conductor of the world's top orchestras.

In the 2022–2023 season, Saraste conducts several orchestras, including the Paris Orchestra, the London Philharmonia Orchestra, the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra, the Berlin German Symphony Orchestra DSO, and the South Korean Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra.

Saraste is passionate about mentoring young artists in the early stages of their careers. In the summer of 2022, he served as the conductor of the Austrian Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra. Additionally, he is offering vocational skills to future musicians and conductors internationally through his LEAD! foundation.

https://www.jukkapekkasaraste.com/

Paavali Jumppanen

In the span of recent seasons, the imaginative and versatile Finnish pianist Paavali Jumppanen (born 1974) has established himself as a dynamic musician of seemingly unlimited capability who has already cut a wide swath internationally as an orchestral and recital soloist, recording artist, artistic director, and frequent performer of contemporary and avant-garde music.

Jumppanen has performed extensively in the United States, Europe, Japan, China, and Australia and collaborated with great conductors including David Robertson, Sakari Oramo, Susanna Mälkki, Esa-Pekka Salonen, and Jaap van Zweden. He has commissioned numerous works and collaborated with the composers Boulez, Murail, Dutilleux, and Penderecki.

Jumppanen spent the 2011–12 season as a visiting scholar in Harvard University’s Music Department studying musicology and theory to deepen his immersion in Viennese 18th century music.  Jumppanen is currently the Artistic Director to the Australian National Academy of Music in Melbourne, Australia, a position he has held since 2021.

https://www.paavalijumppanen.com/


Sebastian Hilli: Peach

Sebastian Hilli (b. 1990) is a leading Finnish composer who garnered international acclaim on winning some of the most prestigious prizes for young composers such as the Toru Takemitsu Composition Award (2015), the ‘Composers under 30’ category at the 64th International Rostrum of Composers (2017) and the Gaudeamus Award (2018). He composed Peach in 2019 and a new version in 2021.

“Peach paints a portrait of a moment or moments that evoke a feeling of a light and airy dream,” he says. “In my mind it is a warm summer day, a bright flicker that makes things feel unreal and fills the body with pleasure, itching and tingling sensations. The various meanings of the word ‘peach’ have inspired the shape, colours, textures and associations of the work. Soft and round shapes as well as rich and luscious harmonies and melodies colour a story that radiates gentleness, weightlessness, sensuality and juiciness. I wanted to capture that place and a particular feeling that breathes deep in the summer air and its light breezes, awakes the senses and bursts sweetness like a fruit.”
 

Witold Lutosławski: Piano Concerto

Witold Lutosławski (1913–1994) was possibly the greatest Polish modernist, but he was accused of formalism and a ban was imposed on the performance of his first symphony (1947). This somewhat distanced him from contemporary European styles, but despite the pressure, he succeeded in creating an idiom all of his own combining folk music with 12-note techniques. Lutosławski is best known for a mode of composition called aleatory, meaning music involving elements of random choice. His Piano Concerto of 1988 took about half a century to mature; not until he had perfected his idiom did he dare make his third attempt at it, having previously redirected his sketches to other works. It pays tribute to his fellow-countryman Chopin, whose influence may be detected in the effervescent piano texture. His aim was, he said to revive the great keyboard tradition in the spirit of Chopin, Liszt and Brahms, adding that while he had nothing against more recent pianism, no one since Debussy and Prokofiev had had much to say that was new. The concerto is in four movements performed without a break and was premiered in 1988 with fellow Pole Krystian Zimerman as the soloist.
 

Carl Nielsen: Symphony No. 5

Carl Nielsen (1865–1931), a Danish contemporary of Finland’s Jean Sibelius and Norway’s Edvard Grieg, composed six symphonies, the best-known of which is possibly the fourth, The Inextinguishable. The fifth (1922) does not have a title, but although Nielsen never directly admitted it was inspired by the First World War, he often hinted that it might have a narrative. Its premiere got a warm reception in Copenhagen but that in Stockholm was anything but peaceful. There, his style was denounced as brutal and even cacophonic, and some members of the audience marched out in disgust, so that the conductor, Georg Schnéevoigt, had to raise the volume even further simply for the orchestra to be heard. Audiences today find its modernist idiom quite tame. Nielsen described the symphony as “the division of dark and light, the battle between evil and good…The only thing that music in the end can express is resting forces in contrast to active ones”. The first of the two movements builds up to conflict, while the second may be heard as a world reborn or a new beginning arising from the smoking ruins of the first.