Special delivery from Lahti

A blog by Lahti musicians.

Musician bios at the bottom of the page.

Jaakko Kuusisto, Timo Ahtinen and Laura Kokko. Petri Lehto on the right.

Opus 3 no 10 by Petri

posted January 18th, 2009

Spanish London

After being traumatized previous Christmas by large family gathering we decided this holiday season to escape out of the country with just four of us i.e. my core family. Our friends on the other hand wanted to get away from their London home so we ended up occupying their house between Xmas & New Year.

Our English friends were not alone getting away from London though. It soon appeared that in the city of London during the holiday season were pretty much just – bloody foreigners like us! The absolutely dominant language one could hear around the most famous places, the underground, restaurants, shops, museums etc. was in fact Spanish. The next languages were Italian, French, Portuguese and German pretty much in this order. The only English speaking people around seemed to be some city workers, police and minority of restaurant & shop stuff.

Spanish, Italian and Portuguese speaking folks wondered around in groups keeping very much by themselves. Those who had lost their group tried desperately to find somebody to speak their native language in order to find their way in the underground or around city. Local TV channels were constantly raging about big post Xmas sales. Walking in the busiest commercial streets one could count that the first ones to strike for the best bargains were obviously Southern European & - American visitors.

In order to get in to the spirit we squeezed into Choral Evensong at Westminster Abby. The Anglican Church’s traditional Christmas day service includes mostly music. The old cathedral with all the most important figures of British history buried underneath stone plates of the floor certainly sets a very special atmosphere for every guest. Having at first been a bit hesitant attaining the whole service I was completely carried away by most impressive music performed by the excellent Choir of Westminster Abby directed by James O’Donnell with Robert Quinney and James McVinnie at small sub organ and the huge main set of pipes.

Front row British composers have all contributed also to church music. This time Henry Lawes (1595-1662), Gustav Holst (1874-1934), William Walton (1902-83), Bernard Rose (1916-96) and John Taverner (b.1944) were presented. In the middle of the service the choir sang Magnificat by Hieronymus Praetorius (1560-1629) in which Latin and German languages took terms by verse. We were all given a thorough booklet of the texts and even melodies for the traditional chorals we were supposed to join. Evensong started and ended with organ compositions by Marcel Dupré (1886-1971) and Francis Pott (b.1957).    

It also happened that this very holiday season was London’s coldest in 25 years. The more reason for us to gather around dinner table, enjoy good food & wine and keep up Christmas spirit. And despite of being occupied by us visitors good old London hasn’t lost it’s special charm.

Happy New Year 2010 to everybody!
Petri 

The Churchill Arms pub in serious Xmas decor

Opus 2 no 11 by Timo

posted November 5th, 2009

Spring in the middle of autumn

Last week’s concert brought sunshine of spring to the deepest time of autumn. Andreas Spering conducted Schumann’s Spring Symphony (Symphony No. 1, Op. 38) in the Sibelius Hall. The kind of light Schumann shows here is needed indeed when polar night and darkness is greatest here in north.

Orchestra knows Spering well from Easter Concerts, where Lahti has made a tradition to perform either one of Bach’s Passions. Spering knows these Passions extremely well and performances have always been exceedingly bright. I waited enthusiastically what ideas he has to bring to classic-romantic program. My vision that Spering would be only the specialist of baroque music turned out to be wrong immediately.

The beginning of symphony is sometimes played as a fanfare, but Spering wanted that orchestra felt the first phrase as a sublime song or hymn. In this symphony Schumann was influenced by Adolf Böttger’s optimistic Spring poem and according to Spering the first subject of symphony, its rhythm, comes straight from that poem. “Spring has arrived” − not the fanfare, but hymn!

I told this little detail because I think it is a brilliant example how music is always related to other phenomenas in art and as well in society of its time. Getting to know the history of music is necessary for performers, but it is also necessary to know general history as well. Besides also music listeners can make listening experience more deep (if wanted) by getting to know each epoch’s art and history. The examples I have here described could easily open new perspectives to works performed.

Opus 3 no 9 by Petri

posted October 26th, 2009

Recipe for making a male singer star (national or international)

Ingredients:

−    velvety baritone voice spiced with good musical instinct, formal musical education is not necessary but does not harm either

−    pleasantly masculine looks, not too pretty in order to be convincing in more dramatic repertoire  

−    artistic lifestyle with at least two major vices, preferably ladies and alcohol, several marriages preferred and at least rumors of extramarital children  

−    a special time in history, preferably national or/and international crises like war or/and post war

Preparation:
     
Mix all the ingredients well together and enhance with good recording contract and several appearances in movies. In order to speed up process stir in scandals of professional and personal life in suitable intervals. In some cases several comebacks are needed for lasting reputation.

Result:

Immensely popular, nearly worshipped singer star whose performances, recordings and movies bring loads of money at least to the managing party. Sometimes even for the performer himself. In a successful case it is very likely that several biographies will follow in form of books and films. Managing party can easily get some extra profit through lawsuits against inaccurate or harmfully scandalous information in those publications. 

National type can be extended to international when baritone in question can use a globally known language.


Example of the international type: Frank Sinatra (1915−1998)


Example of the national type (Finnish): Olavi Virta (1915−1972)

Reproduction concert with Finnish national singer star Olavi Virta’s movie songs now on classiclive. Reproductive baritone Hannu Lehtonen.

cheers, Petri

Opus 1 no 13 by Laura

posted October 14th, 2009

We have been having lovely autumn days, but lately very cold nights and so we are already waiting for the first snow to fall down any time now. (That is at least what the weather report told us.)
 
With Juha Kangas we played a good program combination with Vaughan Williams, Penderecki and Haydn. In Vaughan Williams’ piece ”Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis” extra challenge was given by the fact that the piece was written for two orchestras. I was playing in the second orchestra which was located in the upper balcony and it gave a totally new perspective to the job at hand. The view of course was different (a very good place to look at the beautiful Sibelius hall btw) but more importantly the way you hear yourself versus the first orchestra on the stage was challenging. Arto Noras played Penderecki’s Largo which is emotionally extremely strong music; very beautiful but I found it also to be heartbreaking. Haydn Symphony number 97 ended the evening with an amiable spirit. It has been told that Haydn was a humble, good humored man. He came from a very ordinary family and Haydn has said that maybe his example will prove to young people that even from an empty beginning can something marvellous be born (sorry for the somewhat clumsy translation, but I like the spirit of that quote).
 
Then we had a very interesting week with Christian Lindberg acting in three different roles; he was the composer, the conductor and the trombone soloist. One could wonder if there is enough energy in one person to pull through such an evening, but definitely the amount of energy is not a problem for maestro Lindberg. In the program we had (besides Lindberg) Stravinski and Brahms. Christian Lindberg’s piece ”Helikon Wasp” is a comment for ”an intellectual mannerism” as Lindberg puts it. I think there is a good point in it which works no matter you want or not, because most likely you either really enjoy the piece a lot or then you don’t like it at all; and that is the point; to take a stand, to feel, to like or to hate, instead of just staying cold and distant.
 
And for the good and useful ending since I have now finally learned my lesson I will at once spread the message forward and so I strongly advise everyone: never ever drive a bicycle while speaking on the mobile phone!
Safe journey to everyone!

-Laura 

Opus 2 no 10 by Timo

posted October 13th, 2009

Revolutionary

At last we got to hear it: Chopin’s Revolutionary Étude Op. 10 No. 12! Pianist Krzysztof Jablonski threw himself courageously after Chopin’s Concerto in E-Minor to the virtuosic atmosphere of Revolutionary Étude. The sixteenth notes on left hand rumbled convincingly in the hall. Audience rewarded Jablonski’s choice aloud. Atmosphere was like in a carnival! Soloist must have had it in his mind, that it is the 160th year since Chopin’s death (and in fact 200 years since his birth).

Occasionally it feels that since the favourite songs are avoided, people only hear them from recordings. Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is absent long times, because nobody wants to take so obvious choice. It looks like artists have a strong ambition to always find something new and unheard from repertory. That is why those wonderful “hits” lies in the shadow of this aim. Even I had to live almost 50 years to hear first time in concert the Revolutionary Étude that everybody knows. And it was fantastic! As a child I began my studies in piano lessons and since that there has been a special place in my heart for piano music. I always get electrified in special way when soloist is pianist.

Of course we also played other music: Mendelssohn (3rd Symphony) and Beethoven (Fidelio Overture). Previous week there was a Sibelius Festival and atmosphere was staggering the whole week. Almost like on a tour in our own fantastic Sibelius Hall! How to get in the daily routine and to “normal” season atmosphere? There is a simple answer: two full halls (other in Hämeenlinna’s Verkatehdas) showed that our lovely audience also values the traditional overture-concerto-symphony concept.

Opus 4 no 8 by Jaakko
posted September 22nd, 2009

NEW SEASON IN LAHTI

We’re back! The Lahti Symphony enjoyed a long summer break, which is  always nice - but you can’t rest forever. On August 24th, our fall  season began, in a rather unusual way. The first two days were not  spent preparing for a concert, but instead we recorded a big bunch of  music. Not for a CD, however, but for film.

The symphony orchestra has always been important to major filmmakers,  regardless of country. Some of the best American composers in the  1950s and ‘60s spent a lot of time working in Hollywood, and most  Hollywood directors still rely on the good old symphony orchestra to  produce the most dramatic and colourful film scores. In Finland, the  use of symphonic music in the movies has been rare during the past  decades, but for some directors and certain films, it is a must. Timo  Koivusalo is now one such director.

Timo’s films may not be known to audiences outside Finland, as all of  them are based on very much “Finnish” subjects, sometimes war stories,  sometimes tales about famous artists (such as Jean Sibelius or  legendary entertainer Irwin). In Finland, his films always draw large  audiences. In May of this year, Timo called me and told of his newest  project, scheduled for release in December. He said “it is a 3-hour  movie, we need more than one hour of music for it, and we need it by  September”, and asked whether I would be willing to compose the music.  I had long hoped for an opportunity to write music to a major film,  and despite the almost-hopeless schedule (normally I would request  about 6 months to complete such an amount of music) I accepted. At the  same time, I told Timo I would need the Lahti Symphony to record this  for the film, and Timo agreed.

The film itself is a true Finnish epic, based on a series of books by  beloved author Väinö Linna. Originally titled “Täällä Pohjantähden  alla” (crude translation: Under the North Star), the story is about  events related to Finland’s independence in 1917, the class warfare  that came with it and the resulting civil war. The story is told from  the perspective of a group of less-than-fortunate people who fight for  the right to a better life - but are drawn into an attempt at armed  revolution. As a result, many of their family members are either  killed in battle or executed as “war criminals” later on. It is a  strong, dramatic story based on actual events, and as such it was  naturally very inspiring to write music to.

The music finally amounted to 76 minutes, which was recorded at  Sibelius Hall in Lahti during two days. I must thank Timo Koivusalo at  this point for going to great lenghts (and expenses, I’m sure) to  provide a good working environment for us. Film music is often  recorded in studios, but for us, having a chance to do it in our hall  was of course the best thing - and you will be able to hear it. Timo  also hired top-of-the-business people to handle the recording: our old  friend, sound engineer Antti Murto, and artistic producer Laura  Heikinheimo were there to make sure we could sound our best. For me as  the conductor, having a reliable producer was the most important thing.

One hour of sound-check and some rehearsing, and we were ready to go.  Not bad considering that the orchestra had not played a single note  together since June. It is in situations like this were an orchestra’s  professionalism is detected. Lots of music that is unknown to all,  with very little time to spend. Thanks to all my colleagues for your  excellent work and attitude!

After these couple of days, the orchestra went on to play a series of  children’s concerts, and the following week was spent playing great  tunes by Abba, Beatles, Queen and others, in our annual pop concerts  with fabulous vocal group Rajaton. This year’s Sibelius Festival is  also already behing us - all in all, we have played more than 10  concerts in the first few weeks of the season. But one of my fellow  bloggers will fill you in on that soon. In the meantime, the Sibelius  Festival and the pop concert with Rajaton are all available here on  classicLive. Welcome back to another season of great orchestral music  of all kinds!

Jaakko

Opus 3 no 8 by Petri

posted September 14th, 2009

Anniversary Festival

My fellow blogger Laura strongly advised me to start this entry by mentioning our pervious week’s concerts:

It has already become a tradition to start our new season with a set of concerts with our long time companions the Rajaton vocal ensemble. This time we had a “Best of Rajaton & Lahti Symphony” program which filled the hall three times in a row.
(Now that I have pleased Mistress L. I can go to my own stuff  ;-)

What a week! This was the 10th anniversary of Lahti Symphony’s annual Sibelius Festival with three orchestra and two chamber concerts. Three full concerts rehearsed and performed within a week is rather hard work and I have to admit that especially the final orchestra concert squeezed the last drops out of me. A genius program designed by our maestro Jukka-Pekka Saraste:

Pohjola’s Daughter - The Oceanides - Night Ride and Sunrise - The Bard - 4th symphony!

All my favorite symphonic poems and my favorite symphony in a same concert! The pieces require maximum concentration, very demanding playing and super focused rest counting from bass players. The fourth symphony is a piece of music nobody claims to truly understand but is nevertheless a superbly deep and touching music from start to finish. Saraste’s reading was truly “swimming in the deep end”. A long silence before applause after the “question mark” ending of the symphony told clearly how strong Sibelius’ most cryptic symphony is. 
 
In the two previous festival concerts we played also the second and the third symphonies. After a long dictatorship of maestro Vänskä (though very good and fruitful!) it’s so refreshing to play these familiar works with maestro Saraste and like we already have done with our coming chief conductor maestro Okko Kamu.  It’s probably like when after a divorce you begin to meet new ladies…?

The ten year old festival seems to be doing fine. Good crowd in all the concerts and what is especially beautiful – lots of visitors from abroad!


Beautiful autumn to everybody!

Petri

Opus 1 no 12 by Laura

posted June 25th, 2009

Summer is here! (And for that reason it is a bit hard to remember what I actually should write about... but let's try!)

After the last ClassicLive concert with Orff's Carmina Burana we still had two more concerts to play with Lahti Symphony Orchestra before our summer holiday. We played concerts at Riihimäki and Naantali music festivals. Program was quite a huge pile of wonderful music including Mozart (the evergreen 40th symphony), Grieg (Holberg suite, one of my personal favorites), Sallinen (Concerto for cello and clarinet), Haydn (the surprise symphony), Sibelius (the lover), Beethoven and Svendsen (from both of the latter we played romances for violin). As you can read it was enough stuff for the one week, especially keeping on mind that it was the last week before the summer holiday. Jaakko was doing the conducting and playing the solo parts as well. (Although for an attentive reader let's confess that he played only the violin solo parts. For Sallinen's concerto we had on clarinet Michel Lethiec and on cello Arto Noras.)

Naantali is a lovely summer city, but this time the famous Naantali's sun was playing a bit hard to get and the sky was instead covered with clouds. But it is a beautiful place all the same, I am always enjoying the feeling of being close to the see. Both of the concert places are in fact very atmospheric. In Riihimäki we played in the Finnish Glass Museum and in Naantali we played in the old church. For me the Naantali church has many memories from the times that I was a little girl, we used to go there with my family to listen the festival's concerts and I've been told that I have been sleeping and drawing pictures in many of the very famous artists' concerts there... ;-)

After these visits to two Finnish music festivals our orchestra was ready for the summer holiday! In fact Naantali music festival has been many times the last work of the season for our orchestra and that concert often has a special feeling about it and so it did have this time also.
 
And so we are here now in the middle of the summer.
Again the summer nights are smiling (Bergman!) and one really remembers that during the summer we are indeed living in the country of light.
Lot of festivals all around and of course the nature's own music with the sounds of the summer wind, all the birds and sometimes a sudden beautiful silence in the forest.

Summer is here and in the autumn we will be back!
Now out everybody! (including myself!)
Summer is here!

-Laura

Opus 3 no 7 by Petri

posted October 2nd, 2008

Carmina

Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana does not seem to lose it’s popularity amongst audiences. It is a powerful piece of music with big orchestra, mixed and childrens’ choruses and a soloist trio. This time we also had some extra players from Lahti Conservatoire of Music and on the top of everything brilliant light design by Aki Helminen.

Carmina is typically a work that brings completely new audience to the hall partly because of it’s reputation as a piece leaning quite a bit towards rock’n roll. It did not fail this time either - so nice to see many fresh faces in the hall! With a history of bit of a rock player myself I have to admit having a this big apparatus on stage giving it’s full power does seriously - well – kick ass.

Orff was a music pedagog too and did leave no means unused. A suitable dose of powerful stuff with full chorus, enough repetition to give also new listeners enough to grab to and finally some just amazing melodies especially by soloists. Our baritone soloist Jaakko Kortekangas gave a superb reading to the voluptuous medieval texts and the extra high tenor Lassi Virtanen performed a rather touching “Roasted Swan”.  Besides could anyone resist our soprano soloist Tiina Vahevaara’s fabulous “Dulcissima” before the new appearance of the opening themes?

 I think this was a good way to close our season at the Sibelius Hall with two full houses. After we only did a couple of festival gigs about which Laura will give her report soon.

Have a good summer everybody!

Petri

Opus 4 no 7 by Jaakko
posted May 3rd, 2009

TOURING IN CHINA WITH OUR FUTURE MAESTRO

On April 27th 2009, the Lahti Symphony was gathered at Sibelius Hall, 
ready to start rehearsals as usual. Well, not quite as usual, because 
this rehearsal was not aiming at "just another" concert at home, but 
it was being held in preparation for our second tour in China. With 
works by Sibelius, Beethoven and Vasks conducted by a good friend of 
our orchestra - and countless other orchestras - Okko Kamu, the day 
would have been interesting enough as it was.

But this rehearsal started with our GM Tuomas Kinberg taking the 
podium to announce an agreement that makes Okko our Principal 
Conductor from 2011 on. It is not often that news of such importance 
are delivered and received, and it is also not often that news are so 
positive. We feel privileged to continue working with the highest rank 
of conductors, and welcome Okko most warmly.

This, of course, put a whole new flavour on the entire tour. We held 
two intensive, yet very pleasant rehearsals in Lahti, and on Monday. 
May 4th, we all departed for Shanghai.

Transporting an entire orchestra to another country is a big 
undertaking. You don't just bring people, but a pile of instruments as 
well. Some of them are carry-on, some require their own seats (talk 
about ego) and some are freight that nonetheless need to be handled 
with great care. It is up to the management to prepare all of this to 
make sure nothing goes wrong during the often hectic days of a tour. 
As concerts are held nearly every day during our stay in China, the 
margin for error is nonexistent, and we musicians rely on our managers 
to get it right. And they do, thankfully. Instruments are one thing, 
but organizing travel for people can be tricky as well. You need 
visas, applications need to be filled out, photos need to be taken, 
and not all participants are necessarily citizens of the same country, 
so different procedures apply. I'm glad to just play my instrument.

The day we arrived in Shanghai was free of any rehearsing or 
concertizing, and some of us went shopping, some slept, some found a 
nice place to eat. Some did all of the above. On Wednesday, May 6th, 
it was time for concert no. 1, and it took place in Suzhou, a two-hour 
bus ride from Shanghai. The concert hall was located in a weird area - 
some kind of "industrial park" - with huge shopping malls, an 
amusement park, a lake, and colossal apartment buildings. But almost 
no people anywhere! A considerable contrast to central Shanghai, by 
any measure.

We opened our tour with a programme consisting of Latvian composer 
Peteris Vasks' "Musica dolorosa" for string orchestra, followed by 
Sibelius' Violin Concerto with our "old" friend Ilya Gringolts 
handling the solo part, and finished with Beethoven's 4th Symphony. 
The nice crowd wanted more, so we concluded with a small encore by 
Sibelius - "Scene with Cranes". It was nice to have the first concert 
over with - that always somehow relaxes the group.

The next day, our performances continued in Shanghai's old and very 
traditional concert hall. But this beautiful building has something in 
its past that is enough to amaze almost everyone. In 2003 a new 
highway was being built through the city, and the concert hall stood 
right in its path. Many societies might have opted to demolish such an 
old house, but not the Chinese: they actually lifted the whole 
building, then moved it some 70 metres, and put it down. All in one 
piece!

After this, our tour continued to Beijing and its brand new but 
already famous National Centre for Performing Arts. Now, this is an 
amazing building. It is so big that when I tried to take a photo of 
its exterior from about 200 metres away, it didn't fit in the picture. 
It really is huge, with stunning modern designs both on the outside 
and inside. In the building, you find the 2,000-seat concert hall with 
great acoustics, another hall for opera, another for theatre, and so 
on. I counted 13 dressing rooms for the concert hall alone.
Entering the building is also an unusual experience. There is no 
majestic "main entrance" in the traditional sense, because the 
building is surrounded by water. You walk into a kind of tunnel that 
goes under the water - and this tunnel has a glass ceiling so you 
actually see the water above you. The tunnel then leads into the 
actual building.

We enjoyed thoroughly this new creation that apparently is only about 
one year old. But we also enjoyed the rest of Beijing. One could sense 
the changes that are happening in the city: almost all cars now appear 
to be modern, probably mostly Korean or Japanese but also Chinese I 
guess, and this seems to have cleaned up the air considerably. There's 
still a lot of pollution, obviously, but the change from a few years 
ago seemed to be very pronounced.

We played to two near-sold-out audiences in Beijing, and had a great 
time. Both Sibelius's 3rd and 7th symphonies were presented, as well 
as the violin concerto again. The last concert concluded with 
Beethoven's 4th and the appropriate encores, after which it was high 
time for a little party. But this party didn't happen only because of 
the concert: my wife and I had the pleasure of celebrating my fellow 
classicLive blogger Petri Lehto's 50th birthday with some excellent 
Beijing Duck, at Da Dong's. Okko, our conductor was there, along with 
our managers (including tour manager Ellin Chu - thanks Ellin for a 
good time!) and the entire contrabass section, who of course are 
Petri's nearest colleagues. Many thanks to Petri for a great evening!

The following day was spent in the airplane again, returning to 
Finland. Hopefully we will have a chance to experience China soon again!

Opus 2 no 9 by Timo

posted May 3rd, 2009

On 23rd and 24th of April we got a chance to play for the first time in Sibelius Hall one of my favourite works, namely Bela Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussions and Celesta. For certain it is one of the most challenging string orchestra works ever written. The adding of percussions, piano, harp and celesta is a successful choice. The whole work is like a study of sound spectra. Wide range of colours and atmospheres is incredibly broad. The mood may be chilly like from another world, sometimes one could dream of being in the middle of fair. No wonder that the music, especially the third part which sounds ice-cold has found its way to Stanley Kubric’s classic horror movie The Shining (1980).

Bartók has been able to write a work which sounds amazingly modern still today, over seventy years after the first performance. From musician’s viewpoint there lies lot of very demanding places and there is many possibilities to make mistakes. String orchestra has been divided to different sides of the stage. Time to time they are together and time to time they accompany each other. It is challenging to be together when half of your section is playing twenty meters apart. For listener this creates a great “stereo” sound.

It was great to play under the baton of J-P Saraste. He willingly conducts Bartók and has brought many works from Bartók to our repertory. This was definitely a top of spring season, at least for me!

Spring has finally arrived here in north and one definite signs of spring is the traditional May Day concert on 1st of May. This afternoon matinee belongs definitely to the spring traditions of Lahti music lovers. Programme consists of favourite pieces and the most important thing is to celebrate the spring’s arrival with a joyful mind, and perhaps with a glass of sparkling wine.

Right after 1st of May we rehearsed for the upcoming China Tour, where we will travel on 4th of May with conductor Okko Kamu who will become our principal conductor on 2011. We will visit in Shanghai, Suzhou and Beijing. The healthy issues of world are now some concern, but with a good hand hygiene and carefulness we will make it. At least there is no travelling restriction to China and let’s hope everything goes fine and we will come back healthy and as planned on 11th of May. About China’s trip then also in the blog. See you then!

-- Timo

Opus 1 no 11 by Laura

posted April 24th, 2009

Hello everybody, here we are again back with the blog! I am sure we have been desperately missed while we were gone, well, actually... I rather wonder did anyone noticed that we were absent... well, hopefully someone did? ;-)

I am gonna update you now about our two last weeks, just to give a good example of how very diverse programs we do in a short timeline.

Two weeks ago we started  to prepare our Easter concert, which was this year the St. Matthew's passion by Bach. (Unfortunately because we played that concert in Ristinkirkko it was not available for the classiclive viewers.)
The piece itself is of course very familiar to every one who knows even a bit about classical music. The most professional listeners come to the Easter concerts with their own cushions since in the churches the benches can usually be rather uncomfortable.
I have a very dear memory about St. Matthew's passion from the time that I used to live in Budapest. It was I think the year 2002 that Freiburger Barockorchestra performed st. Matthew's passion at the Liszt Academy of Music. We students had a right to listen the concerts free of charge if we sat on the third floor´s balcony, which was actually a good place if you just happened to get your seat from the first rows. To the most popular concerts we had to queue and sometimes the atmosphere was like in a football game, everybody were waiting the doors to open, so that one could get the best possible seat. This concert was among the top wanted ones and it was totally fully booked. I came in too late after a long day and was standing with a lot of others so that I could actually see and hear as well as possible. The performance was amazing! It was so good that there was no question but to stay there until the very last note had echoed, standing, even I was really tired before I came to the concert. I often remember this concert experience as among my very favorite ones. One of the very highlights of that concert was Sirkka-Liisa Kaakinen´s violin solo in that famous alto aria "Erbarme dich".

St. Matthew´s passion is a huge piece of music; first of all it is a long piece, but then more importantly, it is big emotionally, for its message and then there is something extraordinary in many sense; in the sense of beauty and also in a sense of intellect. It is music that really affects you in all the levels.

I enjoyed a lot our period with Andreas Spearing. In a concert I sensed that there was a big line drawn from the very first note until the very last. Good breathing and cleverly different characters and tempi between the movements. I didn´t have a single blank moment which is a lot to say in such a long piece, instead I felt very awake and was touched by colleagues playing beautiful solis.

----

After eating then a lot of chocolate eggs and lamb and everything what Easter is all about, we came back to work and had a really different week from what we had with Bach.

Last week was about entertainment.  Big, sweet emotions and romance was in the air while we played our concert "the Best of West End Musicals". Conductor was Nick Davies and as our soloists we had Emmi Kangas and Tuukka Leppänen. After three concerts of this sort one feels quit tired with using all that vibrato all the time. So it was very different from Bach in that sense too...

Then of course came the weekend with some chamber music, we had a concert called "Schumann on the Sunday morning" where I was playing with a violist Anu AIras a duo naturally by Haydn (because what else should one play in a concert of Schumann...?) well after that then, there was some great  Schumann in the program.

Now this on going week is a different story with Bartók and still more memories from Hungary, I leave that to someone else to write about.

So, but as you can read there are lot of things going on. Spring it seems, is finally deciding to arrive and I was really cheered up by one of my colleagues while she said on one morning that she is so busy now to have enough time to notice what is going on in the nature all around because for her the April is the most loveliest month there is. I found that inspiring because just few days earlier I had read from the newspaper Helsingin Sanomat that "April is the most depressing month" and also there are words by T.S.Eliot that "April is the cruelest month". But now I look happily around, I wait that lake will finally be open again, trees start to get new leafs and air is full of smells telling that everything is waking up again.

Lovely April to everyone!
-Laura
 

An evening of powerful music by Jaakko

posted December 21th, 2008

On December 11th, the Lahti Symphony played a concert programme that I was very excited about. It featured a new, almost exotic work, a beautiful romantic concerto with a wonderful soloist, and a symphonic work of great depth and inspiration. This was a concert I would have gone to hear - if I wasn't playing it. Fortunately, we have classicLive!

Kimmo Hakola's work from 2006, titled Maro (it apparently means "Sea" or "Ocean") is a challenging piece of music. Rhytmical traps for everyone, incredibly fast music for brass players, woodwinds also playing percussion, and an endless variety of tempi and time signatures for the conductor. As a performer, it is difficult to appreciate all of the piece's musical content, as most of your focus needs to be on the playing itself. But my first experience with Maro was as a listener, when Susanna Mälkki - this evening's conductor - conducted the piece in London, with the BBC Symphony playing. I immediately recommended it for Lahti, and since the London concert I have even conducted the piece myself. So you could call me something of a fan.

Max Bruch's violin concerto in G Minor is often heard, and with good reason. Especially in the hands of a highly expressive, yet disciplined soloist like Chloë Hanslip, this piece really comes to life. Chloë seemed intent on making every note sing, never letting go of a single tone until she was done with it. One of my favorite violin soloist in a long time!

The choice of the main work on the programme was dedicated to the memory - and 100th birthday celebration - of Olivier Messiaen. L'Ascension is highly characteristic of Messiaen's late-romantic style, and in my opinion, a fascinating piece of music. One thing that strikes both musician and listener is that the composer does not seem to "need" the full orchestra to achieve the greatest effects. He begins this four-movement masterpiece with only winds and brass, in a movement that is highly demanding for those players. Just listen to the fascinatingly weird harmonic progressions, culminating in celebrations of a simple E Major chord. Or the last movement, where the only section receiving full employment is the 1st violin section. Messiaen uses only string here - but only 5 2nd violins, 5 violas and 2 celli - and no contrabasses at all! Still, this movement manages to elevate the drama of the entire piece to new levels. This is some of the slowest music ever written, but with incredible tension. Take some time, switch off your phone, close all doors, and pour yourself a glass of good wine - if you like. Relax and let Messiaen take over. Not a bad way to spend some time over the holidays
that are now just around the corner.

And all the best to all of you for the New Year!

Jaakko

 

Opus 2 no 8 by Timo

posted December 17th, 2008

Finnish Independence Day Festive Concert

About my childhood’s Independence Day celebrations I don’t remember more than that between 6pm and 8 pm there had to be two candles at each window. Lights of the rooms were as dim as possible and atmosphere was somehow festive.

Music has essential role of Independence Day celebration all across Finland where one simply can sing and play. This kind of festive concert self-evidently belongs to calendars of Finnish Orchestras. Although Independence Day is a national day off, it is not that for us musicians. However this is a pleasant duty to be working.

Music chosen for this concert emphasizes the character of this special day. Each time programme includes Sibelius’ Finlandia and our National anthem Maamme. Rest of the programme consists naturally of our national composer’s repertory. So it is in this year. Especially delightful was to have our hometown composer Harri Ahmas’ recent Percussion Concerto to be performed in front of our Lahti audience (and through classiclLive to international enthusiasts). The intense mood of this work holds one in control from its beginning to the end.

The Independence Day festive concert has already become an event, which is closely linked to our history and also to the birthday of Sibelius (8^th of December), this year already 143^rd of its kind!

We will begin our celebration on 5^th of December with Matinee for Veterans, where we traditionally play most of our Festive Day concert programme. Concert is intended to Lahti regions war veterans and to their attendants. Atmosphere is tangible and emotionally moving. This tradition was developed in the beginning of 21^st century.

On 6^th of December we will play the actual Festive concert to our citizens and on 8^th of December we will head to Hämeenlinna, the birth town of Sibelius, and play the same concert, however without the National anthem.

It is interesting to meet three different audiences and three different atmospheres. Okko Kamu’s interpretation of the 7^th Symphony by Sibelius seemed to affect all listeners.

Timo

Opus 3 no 8 by Petri

posted December 9th, 2008

Walton for Hickox,

Previous week’s concert we played with our regular visiting conductor Martyn Brabbins. He’s a skilful and reliable artist and as a native conducting often British music that is still a bit too rarely preformed in Finland. This time we concentrated on William Walton’s first symphony which is a very strong and colorful work. (John Williams has certainly studied well his Walton ;-)

Another regular visitor in Finland joined us for the concert too. Moscow based father figure of hundreds of pianists Aleksei Lybimov
came to perform Mozart’s 17^th piano concerto with his unique style and bravura. His chamber music oriented approach to concertos always warms my heart.

Down side of the week was that Maestro Brabbins brought the sad news of his countryman and friend Richard Hickox’s sudden death. I had a pleasure to play under Hickox’s baton several times while he was principal conductor of BBC National Orchestra of Wales. His input to British and later on also to Australian music life was remarkable. Hickox’s devotion to choral works and generally music with human voice was well known. He knew practically all that repertoire. I especially remember the Proms concerts of BBC NOW with Maestro Hickox conducting big oratorio works by Dvořak, Tippett and Britten.

According to the request of Maestro Brabbins we dedicated our concert to the memory of Richard Hickox. We gave the symphony an exceptionally emotional reading which he would have appreciated for sure.

Petri

 
(Richard Hickox 1948 - 2008)

Opus 1 no 10 by Laura

posted November 20th, 2008

 The otherness –  the other kind of life; life in the second violin!

The whole idea of the otherness came to me some time ago during one of our rehearsals while conductor was saying something specific to our second violin section. I started to think about the word “second” in Finnish. Second is in Finnish “toinen” which could also be translated into English as “the other”. (Finnish is not at all the only language which behaves like this.) From that day on I started to call our section “the other violin”, first in English and a bit later I translated that back into Finnish as “muu viulu” (“muu” is in English the other, but then of course it is also a sound made by a cow). What I realized then was that I am not actually playing the violin, but I am playing the other violin, and in fact this realisation made really much sense to me. So there actually is an instrument called a violin and then, there is that other thing that is called “the other violin” and that is the instrument what we in the second violin use.

Since then I have also realized that I live in the kind of otherness and I have already made big plans to write some day (really, really far away in the future) my thesis on Philosophy with the working title of “The otherness – problematics of the life in the second violin”.  I don´t know, maybe it would actually work better as a fictive novel or maybe it will be a memoirs, but I am already sure that it won´t be a big bestseller in any case.

Why I am writing about this now is that on the weeks like our week before last, with all that magnificent sweetness of the operetta music, life in the other violin was in fact a bit different. While the real violins (the first violins, that is) were enjoying themselves with the vivid themes and touching melodies, we in the other violin had a different fate with our neverending waltz accompaniment. I don´t say that we didn´t enjoy it, just we were once in a while wondering if there is a webpage from where it would be possible to order a set of brand new right arms for our other violin section members. Because really, that constant waltz accompaniment is actually extremenly heavy to play, so I suggest to everyone that it is always a good place after an operetta performance to have a little quiet moment for a memory of the right arms of the other violin section, may them rest in piece, at least for a while.

But why then, I am nowadays calling our section by the name of “the other danger”? That is something that I am not going to reveal to you my dear readers (at least not yet, maybe then in my not-bestseller-novel, so be patient...).  But I can say that life in the second (other) violin can be a lot of fun!

Cheerful November to everyone,

Laura ;-)

Opus 2 no 7 by Timo

posted November 11th, 2008

October 7, 2008

I still remember well, when I studied at the Sibelius Academy in the 80's, I assisted the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra. My teacher was Olli Kosonen, who has now passed away, but was then the Principle Double Bass. He sometimes offered temporary jobs for his advanced students, who did not have a regular job in any orchestra.

Those gigs were very educational. I got to play with the best professional artists, meaning that I got hands-on experience how it is to work in a professional symphony orchestra. When I did not have that much experience, I guess I must have been a bit excited. The conductor might be Paavo Berglund, Leif Segerstam or someone equally highly esteemed. Reflecting later on, I must have learned a lot and that is why I still consider those concerts very meaningful at that stage of my studies.

Last week, students from the Lahti University of Applied Sciences joined our ranks in order to gain some experience in orchestra playing. The task was demanding: Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. Some students performed quite difficult tasks, such as solo woodwinds. It is nice to work with students. The energy of the younger and the experience of the older creates an interesting atmosphere and I believe that all parties involved appreciated it. The students also gained the valuable orchestra experience.

The piece was performed several times (pedagogically speaking it is good). The audience consisted of pupils from different schools in Lahti. There was also an actor, who in between the parts presented the pictures. He  also retold Mussorgsky's biography. Judging from the young audience, who concentrated quietly on the story and music, the concert was a success. I think these youth concerts awaken interest for classical music in some pupils. In our technological world, it is good to try find such experiences as live music.  

In the end of the week, we visited the Finlandia Hall in Helsinki in order to play two record release concerts. The record in question consists of Queen's music and it is together with the Rajaton, the vocal ensemble. The ambience in those concerts was incomparable. Altogether, a heavy but rewarding week! This week, symphony a la Prokofiev.

Timo

Opus 1 no 9 by Laura

posted October 9th, 2008

Sinfonia Lahti Chamber Ensemble: Il viaggio a Roma 19th-22nd September

On the morning dusk (5.30a.m.!) of September 19th we (seven musicians from Symphony Lahti and our orchestra´s general manager Tuomas Kinberg) gathered to a minibus in Lahti, ready to start our journey to Rome: the eternal city. Waking up on that early hour I always feel myself anything but eternal and even more problems arises when it is not possible to get sufficient amount of coffee into one´s system, and so I think it is almost understandable that I tried to travel to Rome with my garbage bag as one part of my luggage. Well, luckily that didn´t happen and we were able to reach our flight with some elegance. During the flight I started to read my book of choice for the travel which was Moravia´s "Il viaggio a Roma". I had a strange sensation of a story in a story while just on the moment when the steward started to read the landing instructions in our actual flight the same was happening in the Moravia´s book.

The first impression of Rome this time was a bit grey and during the day there was even some rain, which was infact quite suitable for us since we had decided to start our evening´s concert with a cute little piece called "Waterdrops" which was composed by Jean Sibelius while he was about 10 years old. We were staying at the residence of the Finnish Embassy which is a lovely building nicely situated near the villa Borghese and we felt very warmly received by the Finnish Embassador Pauli Mäkelä. The residence building was also a place for our first concert in Rome. During the evening we learned that before becoming a residence of the Finnish Embassy the building was owned by a cultural family and they had hosted some private concerts where had performed for example Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong. We had in our evening´s program pieces from Sallinen, Sibelius, Crusell, Mozart and Ahmas. Evening ended up very beautifully in the garden of the residence, the rain had stopped and we had some wine in the candle light.

On the first morning in Rome plans to sleep late failed because somehow I just woke up before the alarm clock a bit like an anxious child, the sun was shining beautifully and it was so nice to wake up and to realize that one is in Rome! After some decaffeinated coffee (that is a serious crime indeed) we went for a little walk and for a real espresso. Saturday was still a busy day, we were rehearsing for the evening´s concert. In the program we had Crusell´s and Ahmas´ trios for winds, Sallinen´s string quartet "Some Aspects of Peltoniemi Hintrik´s Funeral March" and a massive Brahms´ clarinet quintet. Concert was part of the festival "Notti Romane al Teatro Marcello" and was originally planned to be held in Teatro Marcello, which is an old open air theatre. In the evening however the wind was too strong and so the concert was moved to an old church "Basilica di San Nicola in Carcere" very nearby. It was probably the best solution eventhough we had carefully prepared to fight against the wind with the clothes-pegs (every musician´s basic equipment). After the concert we were spending an evening in the old Roman ghetto and had the possibility to try the Roman Jewish speciality "carciofi alla giudia", which became somewhat a new antipasto favourite to me.

After these busy and fullworking days, became two days that were busy and full in a very different way. At least I felt that I was just being a one big eye trying to see and experience as much of Rome as it is possible in two days. Vatican, Pantheon, Colosseum, Spanish steps, Trevi Fountain... list is really endless and there are things to see in every corner. A capital, but a very cosy atmosphere, and of cause a remarkable history with so many layers, it is like to breathe history on every step you take. Some shopping, ice creams and many espressos, it is "la dolce vita" itself! I even went so far as being a turist that I did throw a coin into the Trevi Fountain, since that is supposed to guarantee my return to Rome, and definitely would love to go there again! Somehow the idea of Rome as an eternal city, with all the marble statues made to last, well, if not forever but at least more than it is possible for a human, is quite touching.

Ars longa, vita brevis.

Big thanks to my colleagues, I had a very special time playing the concerts and experiencing Rome! Now it is good to be back at home and enjoy the golden autumn.

-Laura

ps. It is possible to hear Brahms Clarinet Quintet by Sinfonia Lahti Chamber Ensemble on Sunday the 12th of October in Kalevi Aho hall (Lahti) at 11.30.

The SLCE in Rome

From left: Jyrki Lasonpalo, Ilkka Pälli, Harri Ahmas, Laura Kokko, Mia Kasper, Eeva Mäenluoma and Anu Airas

Opus 3 no 7 by Petri

posted October 2nd, 2008

To our Slovak colleagues,

Finally I had a chance to listen and watch the recently published concerts of our Slovak colleagues. Absolutely fine playing. Special greetings to the great double bass section!

Welcome to the Classiclive team!

Greetings,
Petri 

Opus 4 no 5 by Jaakko

posted September 25, 2008

How to think and not think simultaneously

The Lahti orchestra has hosted the International Sibelius Festival since 2000, when the Sibelius Hall was opened and gave us the necessary facilities to put this kind of an event together. Up until last year, the festival enjoyed the artistic directorship and conducting of longtime Lahti Symphony chief conductor Osmo Vänskä. This year's festival brought some changes, and the result was highly interesting again.

To understand the situation we musicians found ourselves in, you need to know that since the early 1990s, we have barely played any Sibelius with other conductors than Osmo. We practised with him, recorded with him, and played countless concerts and entire tours of Sibelius with him. His way of interpreting Sibelius is deeply rooted in the orchestra - and for some of us such as myself and my fellow thirtysomethings, it is basically the only way we have known of. It's about everything: tempi, dynamics, sound colours, frasing, bowings, general attitude.

So now imagine taking several major works - 1st symphony, Lemminkäinen, Karelia, to name a few - and rehearsing as well as performing all of them along with many smaller pieces, within 6 days, with a different conductor. A conductor who is, of course, also on the highest level of conductors, but one who brings a whole different set of solutions, from bowings to all areas of interpretation. To do one concert programme in a week under these circumstances would have been interesting enough - so now imagine doing three of them within the same week! The challenge is to not think about how you've always done it, and at the same time to think about what you need to do this time. It is not so easy.

But it worked. I'm not really that surprised, but I am relieved anyway. The fact that it all worked out speaks a lot about Jukka-Pekka Saraste's ability and insight. I'm also tempted to say that it says something about our orchestra. We have seen large crowds of international audiences come to Lahti year after year to hear our Sibelius performances. This year, it was so satisfying to see that they were just as enthusiastic as before, although they got something a bit different than before. It means that the Sibelius festival will have a good and long future - we just have to keep playing. That's not so bad.

Jaakko

Opus 3 no 6 by Petri

posted September 11, 2008

 

Penderecki & Riga,

 

There are at least five flights daily from Helsinki to Latvian capital Riga. Taking a weekend break and enjoying beautiful Riga’s atmosphere and busy cultural life is made dead easy. Last weekend I had a chance to combine all that into my passion for orchestral works with large choruses.

 Among tens of churches in Riga the huge Dome Cathedral stands as a middle figure in the core of the medieval centre. It was founded 1211 (built & renovated ever since like all the great cathedrals) and has one of the biggest organ in Europe with its 6768 pipes.

 Last Saturday The Dome hosted the final concert of the 11^th International Sacred Music Festival with a performance of Krzysztof Penderecki’s Polish Requiem. An obvious choice for the 75^th anniversary of the Polish master!

 Polish Requiem (premiered in Stuttgart 1984 with Rostropovich) represents composer’s later, rather classical style. Score was last revised 2005. To my own taste after playing and listening to “true modernism” and avant-garde a lot these neo traditionalistic or post romantic styles begin to please me more and more. Especially when composed with skill and taste like Penderecki’s.  

 Saturday’s performers were Latvian National Symphony Orchestra, Latvia Sate Choir and a soloist quartet; Czech soprano Jitka Burgetova, Polish mezzo Agnes Zwierko, Polish tenor Adam Zdunikowski and Slovak bass Martin Gurbal under the baton of Polish maestro Zbigniew Graca.

 The tall arches of middle nave projected the sound and power of the big ensemble beautifully giving both blend and clarity at the same time. Rather unusual for church acoustics I say!

 The orchestra appeared well rehearsed and sounded rich especially the cello & bass sections that play an important role representing the beginning theme in several movements. The energetic conductor Zbigniew Graca gave the impression having a good contact with all the performers.

 Penderecki’s score appears most impressive when he dares to get downright romantic and sensitive like in Recordare movement where he suddenly presents a Polish religious song Swiety Bose on the side of Latin mass text.  

 Once again my heart was beating for the fantastic chorus. Accuracy and extremely well performed dynamics combined to faultless voice producing is a concept hard to beat. – And those obviously limitless soprani!

 The soloists sounded good. One only has to accept the fact that they very seldom have chance to really rehearse their ensemble singing for a particular piece. Besides if somebody has a voice and charisma like mezzo Agnes Zwierko does who gives a s**t!

 

 

 

Opus 2 no 6 by Timo

posted September 1, 2008

 

29.8.2008

Orchestra life after summer usually starts with a recording session, since audiences still enjoy summer festivals around Finland. There are many to choose from, the choices vary from chamber music to symphonies to art song to opera. We have opened the regular concert season with an entertaining spectacle towards the end of August for about a decade now, and the symphony series starts right at the beginning of September.

During this week we have been working on music by Queen. This is the third year in a row and after this week, over 10 000 people have heard us. In a city of 100 000 people I think that’s an accomplishment!

I myself listened to Queen already in  1970’s (gosh, am I getting old...?) and still remember the earth-shaking feeling after hearing the Bohemian Rhapsody, in which Freddie Mercury combined progressive rock with some elements of classical-romantic opera he admired.

It takes a lot from the orchestra to produce this kind of performance: First you’ll have to have an idea, then plan the dramaturgy and arrange the music for a big orchestra. Onwards, you need to create the costumes, plan lights and sound etc. and rehearse the whole thing. All along it takes months to do all this. Therefore it’s fun to notice that we haven’t done it for nothing, and the audience has boisterously received the show.

The quality of all this is guaranteed when our great concertmaster, also a composer-arranger-conductor-violinist Jaakko Kuusisto was the one to arrange Queen’s songs. After hearing his versions, you’ll start to feel like the songs originally would have been made for a symphony orchestra. The spirit of Queen is there; just the sound has been expanded to a big group. Jaakko is one devoted musician: besides arrangements he conducts the concerts and is the featured soloist in charming “Love of my life”-ballad.

Quality and know-how, those words go well with our partner Rajaton vocal ensemble, whose performance doesn’t leave you untouched, not me at least (and the other 10 000 listeners).Philharmonics rarely get to enjoy such uproarious reactions of the audience as we did in these concerts. It was fun to see that them looking basically like any symphony concert audience, but the feeling is like in a rock concert. When they cheer at Rajaton, it’s nice to whisper to a colleague next to you, that “you’ll never get enough of this fame, do you?”

All classicLive-friends get to share this experience with us, be my guest.

The Show must go on!

A Kind of Magic

Opus 1 no 8 by Laura

posted August 27, 2008

Greetings from Oulu!

Seven brisk (!) members of Lahti Symphony Orchestra (including myself) were spending almost two weeks in a very sympathetic city of Oulu for physical and mental professional training (Aslak-kuntoutus). While trying to get in a better shape, we were also enjoying the views of the beautiful river Oulu, nice restaurants, some good and some not so good movies, birthday parties and over all the very nice lively spirit which Oulu seems to have.

In our physical training we tried all kind of stuff including pilates, archery, gym, water aerobics etc. But probably one of the most important piece of knowledge was about posture. Especially while sitting and playing how could one hold as good posture as possible. Now I can actually give a little assignment to all my readers, while watching the next ClassicLive concert can you guess who are the seven of us that just had the training (this of course should be easy since we all have now reached the perfect posture and we are just radiant with our overall well-being...)? Well maybe not quite, but at least I can honestly say that our level in the training literally got higher, since all of us had to change our chair settings higher!

Training was nice since it was a good opportunity to learn to know some colleagues better. We talked a lot about different matters of our work and it was good to do that outside the actual workplace. We also had sessions with relaxation which I think we succeeded really well, at least if the sounds of snoring tells that a person is relaxed, then we definitely were.

I sneaked out from the training a bit earlier than the others and after spending almost two weeks with a quite detailed schedule, it felt funny but fun to get back the right to decide about one´s life again Well, I must confess that for me that enjoyment lasted for one night only, after that I was running again after my own life, trying to handle absolutely crazy logistics (organised cleverly by myself) between two towns and two festivals (www.satasoitto.com and www.lahtiorgan.fi). Maybe I was wondering a while the purpose of all that running, while on Saturday morning I was standing alone in a moonlight in a train station of a small town waiting the 5.45 train, so that I would be able to travel for 3 hours back and forth, to have a rehearsal in another town and still come back for the evening to have a rehearsal and a concert. But then, trains are nice, I realized that autumn is at hand while watching the fields of gold outside the train windows. Seeing and realizing the changes of seasons (we also played Vivaldi Four Seasons twice during the weekend) makes one to think about the time passing, and so I was reading T.S.Eliot while travelling, and trying to, well maybe not to conquer the time itself, but at least to conquer my weekend´s crazy schedule.

After all this going around, I am really happy to be at home for a while and gonna watch carefully the trees starting to change their colours.

“Time past and time future
Allow but a little consciousness.
To be conscious is not to be in time
But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden,
The moment in the arbour where the rain beat,
The moment in the draughty church at smokefall,
Be remembered; involved with past and future.
Only through time time is conquered.”

(T.S.Eliot:Four Quartets)

 -Laura

 

Opus 4 no 4 by Jaakko

posted August 18, 2008

We're back!

The Lahti musicians have now enjoyed their 2-month break, and it's time to get busy again. And we will get busy - one week of recording is already behind us, and this week we appear at the Lahti Organ Festival, to be followed the week after with our once-again sold- out Queen tribute concerts with the marvellous Rajaton vocal group.
This you will be able to witness on classicLive - check it out on August 29th.

After Queen, the Sibelius Festival in Lahti will soon follow, and by that time, our fall season will be going at full steam. It is our first season with Jukka-Pekka Saraste at the helm - but more about that later.

In March, I wrote about a concert dedicated to the music of Armas Järnefelt. In May, we begun recording that same repertoire for BIS Records and the start of our fall season included finishing this recording process. This project is significant because it fills in one major gap in our knowledge of Finnish music 100 years ago - the days when Sibelius dominated the field.

Not all of Järnefelt's music is unknown, though. There is at least one piece that is generally very well known among Finns, and that piece is Berceuse (Lullaby). It is a small, simple melody - but so beautiful.
Many people simply love this piece, so we wanted to include it on our CD. The theme is initially played by a solo violin, and I had the pleasure of being the soloist for this. It's actually quite interesting to record a piece of music that you know so well, from hearing it hundreds of times. There is a special kind of expectation from yourself - and surely also from the listeners. You can not "change" things about the music too much, because everyone "knows" how it i supposed to go, but on the other hand you have to find your own way.

We, the musicians, are lucky. We get to play and conduct these wonderful pieces of music, and we get to call it "work". Well, of course it is work, but I find it difficult to imagine any line of work that would be more pleasant. Moments like playing Järnefelt's Berceuse over and over again in a recording session are great, because you get to seek perfection - and while doing that, you get to experience that incredible beauty time after time. Could it be even more beautiful?
Could I reach an even softer tone here? It's good already, how can we make it better?

Jaakko

Opus 3 no 5 by Petri

posted June 12, 2008

We Will Rock You!

Full symphony orchestra with the rhythm section and a click beating in their headphones playing Bohemian Rhapsody background arrangement - a London session orchestra doing a studio gig? No, it’s Lahti Symphony Orchestra’s last sessions of this spring season at Sibelius Hall.

My job swap to the Finnish National Opera Orchestra ended as May did and after five months of very different and interesting work I’m back with my home orchestra.

We have done a cooperation production a year with the fantastic Rajaton vocal ensemble during already six years and performed music among others by Beatles, Abba and latest Queen. The combination of six highly professional singers, rhythm section and full orchestra performing truly superb arrangements by our own concert master and conductor Jaakko has proven to be a success. The sound of this big machine is really grand! Previous recording of Abba pieces sold already gold and we were begged to make this Queen selection. We are the Champions -Who wants to live forever – Love of my life etc. Truly immortal music! No wonder the extra concerts with this program coming up in August sold out within a couple of days.

Naturally these recording sessions are completely different from our normal stuff; the rhythm section is scattered to two places backstage and the vocal ensemble is not present at all. They’ll do their part later in a studio. Even though this is only a small part of our work it is nowadays pretty much as normal as any.

When writing this I’m already on vacation and like many members of Finnish orchestras I’ll join the versatile summer festival scene. This is after all a land of thousands of lakes – and music festivals.

Beautiful summer to everybody!

Petri

Opus 1 no 7 by Laura

posted June 12, 2008

Last two weeks of our spring season in Lahti we were busy recording. We recorded altogether eight days, but at least I somehow lost a track of time. Every day we had two sessions lasting three hours each, in the middle it was a time for a lunch, and in the evening time for a sleep, so that was really pretty much all the life we got on those days.

During these days we heard a lot of sentences like: "Good!... just few small things...", "Good!... some minor corrections left...", "Good! .. only two little things..." well and so on. After this positive feedback then came always a rather long list of ideas and suggestions. On some point I started to wonder whether my mathematics is really rusty on these days, since always (well at least almost always) when I had already counted two little things, the list was still going on. (Probably the problem really was that I should study some elementary mathematics during this summer.)

Well, but seriously, it is great that we are precise, there is no other way to do this right, and I do infact enjoy these recording sessions even though they tend to be pretty tough. So, a very special thank you goes to our producer Ingo Petry who stayed from the beginning to the end as decisive as ever!

About mathematics still one story which might prove that musicians´ knowledge of mathematics can be astonishingly accurate. We were recording a piece which had eleven movements. We didn´t record movements in the correct order, but rather in the order depending on the size of the orchestration. When we started to work with the movement number 11, some of the players were able to start their break earlier since they didn´t play in that particular movement. So they wanted to know which movement would come next, and one of them asked: "What comes after 11?". Of course, some mathematical genius among us was awake and answered: "Well 12, of course!" (In this case, after 11 came actually, well after some general laughter, number 3. Some relative mathematics?)

After all this preciseness, I have now really planned carefully that I am NOT going to make any plans for my summer holiday. I am going to take is as it comes and enjoy the feeling that at least now while the holiday is still in front of me, it is full of possibilities.

Well, but in fact I do have something planned; I am going to watch once again Ingmar Bergman´s "Sommarnattens leende" (Smiles of a Summer Night) and enjoy the long, light, smiling summer nights!
Beautiful summer to everyone!
-Laura

Opus 2 no 5 by Timo - Last concert with Osmo

posted May 6, 2008

Early spring 1985 I was at the old concert hall of Lahti waiting for my turn to audition. Us bassist were quite a few and the air was full of excitement, as it always is when audition is going on. More than anything else I wanted to win this particular audition. I knew that Ulf Söderblom was appointed as a chief conductor and Osmo Vänskä the principal guest conductor. The size of the orchestra was growing and many operational improvements were already taken place.

I won the audition and was about to go crazy from happiness: a permanent job was at least at the time a precious thing and it still is for me. I know the times have changed and many people avoid commitment and appreciate ongoing freedom of choice.

So, I started playing at the same time as Vänskä started his appointment on 1.8.1985, almost 23 years ago. Vänskä became the artistic director in 1988, and later I auditioned to my own orchestra for the second time and was chosen to become the assistant principal. Why am I thinking about all this? Because, I’ll play my last concert with Osmo as a chief conductor tonight.

It will be a special evening for sure and you who read this can decide whether the feeling will be delivered also via the net. It has been fun to notice that the work routine has been exactly as before, very persistent, typical to Vänskä. Bruckner’s 9^th symphony is always challenging both for the orchestra and conductor, it’s almost like going to a gym-after the concert our shirts sure are wet. We have had fun and the tempos, for example are ideal in Vänskä’s interpretation.

What a great ending for a long road together this Bruckner symphony will be. This symphony was his last and unfinished it (it only has 3 movements). Over the years we have played all Bruckner symphonies in order and all besides one have been conducted by Vänskä. The series has been finished during Vänskä’s tenure, so there’s a nice closure to his time with us.

During the past two decades there have been great amount of glorious moments between the orchestra and Vänskä: numerous recording and other awards, golden CD’s, tens of tours in the world’s best concert halls, the growth of the orchestra both artistically and size wise and getting the Sibelius Hall built. Writing about all this would result endless pages in my blog!

It’s great to see, that after such long and intense cooperation the orchestra and our prestigious chief conductor can enjoy music making in an excellent mood. Mutual respect is on a highest possible level and I have a feeling that we will follow each other’s future activities closely. Even though one phase in Lahti is soon over, there are no restrictions to future project either, quite opposite, I think. However, this is not the time or place to think about them now, now is the time to take a breath and ponder the long journey together. For sure it is time to celebrate this historical moment and the best way to do that is to celebrate together with our faithful audience in a symphony concert! Now it’s also the time to give thanks. Until next time, thank you, Osmo!

Timo

Opus 1 no 6 by Laura

posted May 6, 2008

Activity!

Spring and activities is a natural combination! We had our own share of spring activity here in Symphony Lahti two weeks ago in form of a spring festival. We had three concerts with different programs (two of which you can watch here on classiclive). The theme of the festival was Beethoven and so we played surprisingly... (can you guess?) ... Beethoven!

Active is really a correct word for last week. Having to play three different programs in one week is one thing; there is already plenty of activity involved there. Also we mostly played without conductor; Jaakko Kuusisto our concert master was directing us from his stand. Directing in this manner demands a lot of activity from each of the players. It is like enlargened chamber music. I think we had a lot of fun, hopefully you hear it too!

Jaakko had the biggest share of activity since he was not only directing, but also conducting and playing as a soloist. Jaakko played Beethoven´s two violin romances and they sounded really pure and sweet. As for our piano soloist on Thusrday, we had a little (actually a very little as you can read soon...) excitement because our original soloist Joonas Pohjonen called two days before that he was sick. This could sometimes cause some trouble, but not this time. As Jaakko said it is really rare when a soloist calls to cancel the concert that the phone call goes something like this: "Yeah, I am sick, but actually my little brother could come instead of me, if that´s ok?" So we had Juho Pohjonen as our soloist for Beethoven piano concerto and he did a marvellous job, he played with a perfect clarity without losing a single legato line.

On Friday we had a chamber music concert in Kalevi Aho hall and had yet again some nice activity with Beethoven.

While we were active with our Beethoven inside, the genuine spring festival was going on outside. Lake Vesijärvi just thawed and was really full of activity with all the birds busy finding their partners and starting to nest. Weather was really perfect for the whole week and while driving home by bike in the evenings I enjoyed wonderful sunsets.

Lake Vesijärvi in Lahti, Finland
Photos by Laura Kokko

 

Opus 4 no 3 by Jaakko

posted April 21, 2008

This past week's concert in Lahti brought back memories from what was undoubtedly among the most exciting moments of my professional training. Until 1992, my studies at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki had been focused entirely on basic violinistic skills, preparing for competitions, building up my repertoire etc. All very much necessary, but also very disciplined and strict. But then came something different.

I had been taking part in the Academy's symphony orchestra since around 1990. In '92, the orchestra became part of a huge collaboration between different arts universities in Helsinki, with the aim to produce a large-scale musical, using students as performers. The chosen work was West Side Story, and the choice could not have been better. Here was a work of considerable difficulty, presenting challenges to both actors and musicians, but also a work of great beauty and emotion. We all were unbelievably excited to be playing it.

What added to the excitement was that the performances were not staged in a theatre, a concert hall or anything like that. Instead, a old marine cable factory (Kaapelitehdas, in Helsinki) was converted to host us. The main hall is huge and had several nice touches, including the fact that it was possible to drive into it with cars and bikes. There was no orchestra pit, of course, so instead they build a big "stage" for the orchestra - roughly 40 feet above the floor where all the action took place! The surroundings were very rough, and this proved to be the perfect setting for this piece.

Others noticed this too, and all 20 performances were sold out instantly. All in all, it was a powerful experience for us young and inexperienced classical musicians, one that I will never forget. So, whenever I come into contact with this great music of Leonard Bernstein, I'm happy. I conducted the Symphonic Dances last year, and was now equally thrilled to be playing it.

The Sibelius Hall has now had its beautiful organ for about a year, and the Concerto for organ and orchestra by our principal bassoon Harri Ahmas is the first work to be especially written for this instrument. Harri has written a powerful and serious work, where I believe special attention has been given to finding ways to make the organ sound like it is part of the orchestra. There were many big, soloistic moments for the organ, but also several places where I was impressed by how "similar" the organ sounded with the orchestra. There had been much collaboration between Harri and the soloist, Jan Lehtola, and this surely paid off. Congratulations to Harri for the premiere of a major new composition!

Jaakko

Opus 3 no 4 by Petri - Conductors under surveillance

posted April 12, 2008

Now that cameras are on for every Lahti Symphony Orchestra concert gives us regularly an intimate view to conductors’ work. Before it was only every now and then when televised concerts showed how conductors look from the front while working.

In a traditional concert situation conductors have their little share of privacy when audience mostly can see their back and general gestures. With net concerts this privacy is gone forever. Cameras reveal all that used to be “the orchestra face”. Does this make conductors now more careful? - It just might but it shouldn’t. Generally conductors are a bit vane and the new situation may give them more opportunity to show off. On the other hand the cameras show orchestra members’ work and reactions closely as well. Maybe the space of “conductors’ little extra theatre for the audience” has actually diminished.

Naturally the music critics have always been “experts” in judging conductors’ work with an orchestra observing it from the audience. Mostly wrong assumptions. The cooperation between a conductor and an orchestra is very subtle. The physical moves, beating and facial expressions are only part of the communication. Compared to a traditional concert situation cameras show a good deal more, but still not the whole truth. Besides, a big part of conductor’s work has already been done before the concert.

Especially interesting new visitors with Lahti Symphony lately have been Yan Pascal Tortelier, already a distinguished maestro and Andris Nelsons, a younger generation talent. They both seemed to be doing good job and the music came out beautifully. But having seen the concerts only from audience’s point of view I still had to double check from colleagues. - Both maestros were truly appreciated within the orchestra. Welcome back soon!

Anyway, for the obvious reasons that conductors have voluntarily taken the windy podium and moreover because their paycheck is so much bigger than musicians’ the maestros always deserve some jokes.

Music and physics:

- How do you call a very fast maestro?

- A supraconductor!

 

- How do you call a very short maestro?

- A half conductor.

Petri

Opus 2 no 4 by Timo

posted April 4 2008

One thing connecting the Baltic countries and us Finns besides our geographical location in between the east and west is the smallness of our nations and languages. When we got Latvian conductor Andris Nelsons and violinist Baiba Skride as our guest, I almost felt some mysterious sympathy between our souls.

Baiba Skride is an old friend from the past tour to Germany and Austria. The orchestra and the soloist got along very well spending fun moments both on stage and searching for something to eat in a hotel lobby. The ongoing problem on tours is the fact, that before the concert you can’t enjoy a hefty dinner, and after the concert it is hard to find restaurants with open kitchens. It so often happens that you have to settle with the hotel restaurant, which sometimes is flexible with its opening hours for the musicians. It has happened that I’ve gone to bed with a bag of peanuts from the minibar. Such glamorous life we spend on tours...

There has been a big change in Baiba’s life since her last time with us. She brought her 4-months old son with her. Must be very demanding to play as a soloist, but it looked like combining these two things was not a problem of any sort for Baiba, who seems to be very happy . The young man, of course, earned the sympathy of the entire orchestra by just being a baby.

Besides the baby, Rigan conductor Andris Nelsons was a new acquaintance to the orchestra, too. His energetic character full of light earned the respect of our orchestra. While reading his curriculum and upcoming engagements one can only say he is really going downtown! During this week his natural musicianship, flawless technique, easy-flowing interpretations etc. got me to think that the future is his.

Words by Shakespeare had been put to music for tonight’s concert by Dmitri Shostakovich in his film score Hamlet, and Richard Strauss in symphonic poem Macbeth. For me, however, it was the brilliant performance of Baiba Skride in Britten’s Violin Concerto that made the deepest impact. It was a good reminder how rarely performed repertoire is full of precious musical jewels.

-timo

Opus 1 no 5 Laura in Poland

posted March 18 2008

Easter Greetings from Poland!

Schedule of the last week was really so fully booked that there was absolutely no time at all to write anything down before this, but now here we go...
We started the week peacefully with the section rehearsals, which are always useful occasions to get the sound of the section as united as possible. Then on Tuesday on we worked with our chief conductor Osmo Vänskä. Working with maestro Vänskä is always an electrifying experience. There is no place for mediocre expression, it is always "full steam ahead"-feeling and of course especially on a week like this it is really needed too, because we were not only preparing one concert program, but two.

On Thursday´s concert we played, as you can see and listen from classicLive, first little Mozart (personally I adore this music, the joy in it is always so genuine), then Kalevi Aho´s flute concerto with Sharon Bezaly as a soloist, this is a piece which has a very touching somber atmosphere in it, and finally Beethoven´s second symphony which I enjoyed a lot although after playing it I felt like I would like to change my arm for a brand new one!
----
After Thursday´s concert, briskly, on Friday morning we flew to Warsaw. (Thank God, I wasn´t on the earlier flight, that would have meant 5.45 departure from Lahti... Well done you all who survived that!)
In Poland the task was to play three concerts in 12th Ludwig van Beethoven Easter Festival (two concerts in the Warsaw Philharmonic concert hall and one in Arthur Rubinstein Philharmonic hall in Lódz). The return to Finland was already on Sunday evening, so this was a really compact tour. Must say that everything worked really smoothly, which is really important when the schedule is so tight. So thanks for this goes to the general director of the festival, Elzbieta Penderecka! We felt really well taken care off! Thank you also to the Ambassador of Finland Jan Store for inviting us for a nice reception on Friday evening!

This tour was a historical for us since it was the 25th one (if our counting is correct) with maestro Vänskä and the last one with him as our chief conductor. This was felt not only because cameras were peeking in every corner to make a documentary of this final tour, but also through some special emotion which was felt probably most in the last concert in Warsaw where we played Sibelius´ Symphony number five
I must say that I feel privileged to have experienced a small piece of this long collaboration between Lahti Symphony Orchestra and conductor Osmo Vänskä. There has been really something special there.

After the Sunday´s concert we had full three hours to spend in Warsaw. I headed to the beautiful old town, Stare Miasto, where it was possible to enter into a Easter feeling with all the hand painted Easter eggs and Polish Easter palms. Now, some Easter eggs are on my table to remind me of Warsaw and approaching Easter. During this Easter I am going to enjoy (that means also to play) music by Joseph Haydn "The seven last words of our Savior on the cross". It is a very humane work, full of forgiveness and hope despite of its very tragic setting. This describes to me the Easter itself.
Happy Easter to everyone!
-Laura

Opus 4 nr 2 by Jaakko after Järnefelt concert

posted March 10 2008

From the shadow of Sibelius?

I will now offer some thoughts on Lahti Symphony's concert last week.
I spent a long time selecting the works to be performed, proof-reading
the scores, getting to know the works and so on, and my head is now
beginning to clear up from it all.

For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about: our concert
on March 6th featured works by one composer - Armas Järnefelt. He was
a contemporary of Jean Sibelius (Jean married his sister Aino) and,
like Sibelius, Armas was a highly gifted composer. He wrote several
large-scale orchestral works before he turned 30 - but then almost
totally gave up composing and pursued a highly successful career as
conductor, working for a long time at the Royal Opera in Stockholm.
Järnefelt was born Finnish but became a citizen of Sweden in the early
1900's.

The point of this concert was to present a healthy selection of works
from that very productive composing period around 1895 and a few years
on. The reason for this presentation: nearly all of these works are
unpublished, unrecorded - and unplayed in public for almost 100 years!
For example, the largest of these works - the Symphonic Fantasy - was
premiered in 1895 and never heard of again. Until now, that is. Credit
for this event goes mainly to the Järnefelt family, who approached me
with a big pile of scores a few years ago, and also Fennica/Gehrman
music publishers, who supplied us with new performance materials to
all works. All of them will also be published for others to use.
Further boost to the project came from BIS Records in Sweden, who will
produce a CD containing many of these works. We will record it later
this year, so look out for that release, hopefully sometime next winter.

Considering that Järnefelt was only around 25 years old when writing
this music, a couple of things come to mind. First, it is a fact that
he was, without question, one of the greatest composing talents to
ever come out of this country. For example, Sibelius was only
beginning to show his true talent at that age, and one has to wonder
what might have come out of Järnefelt's pen, had he pursued composing
as a full-time profession.
Second, one wonders about why he didn't. It has been reported that the
evolving greatness of his brother-in-law's production was too
overwhelming, leading him to question his own ability. This week's
programme shows that, despite some occasional lack of polish and
finesse, these works show remarkable inspiration and masterful use of
the orchestra. In that sense, there is nothing remotely student-like
in Järnefelt's works. So go ahead and take a trip 115 years back. I
think you'll enjoy it. And you won't hear it anywhere else.

-Jaakko

Opus 3 nr 3 by Petri

posted February 27th 2008

I have a personal problem. Right now here in Finland we are having skiing holidays and I don’t ski. Not that I even could here around Helsinki anyway. There’s no snow. Naturally I could travel to the skiing resorts in the north but I don’t. The main problem is that I wouldn’t even like to. I’ve done my share during childhood. Makes me a bad Finn I have to admit.

Sinfonia Lahti is right now on skiing holidays too giving me extra time to catch up with the net concerts at classiclive. Apart from Sinfonia Lahti concerts our Hungarian colleagues have been providing us with very interesting programs concentrating to big vocal works like Mahler’s 8. and Verdi’s Requiem. At the moment being especially exposed to vocal music the additions of major symphonic vocal compositions have been great fun to listen to.

Obviously there are great resources of choir singers in Hungary. Whole stage full of singers in Mahler was already impressive as such but to hear them tutti with the orchestra was a real experience. Not that I wouldn’t appreciate the good line of soloists and the wonderful orchestra itself but I have to admit that the choruses made me especially happy with their sound and accuracy despite of huge dimensions of the apparatus.

Having sung quite a bit in opera choir Verdi’s Requiem has always had a special place in my heart. I never miss an opportunity to listen to it. In Verdi the machine is naturally nowhere near as massive as in Mahler and the united Hungarian National and Radio choirs were able to present their beautifully blended, full but suitably transparent sound. Very seldom I have heard the Requiem movement so harmonically and rhythmically accurate background for the soprano soloist. Special thanks to the upper soprani for their well focused but never too forced openness!

Still speaking about choruses, last Saturday at the Finnish National Opera we preformed the Finnish premiere of Kaija Saariaho’s newest opera Adriana Mater in which the chorus is set in to the pit with the orchestra!

My next focus at classiclive from Budapest will of course be Das Lied von der Erde with the Hungarian Radio Symphony.


Petri

Opus 2 nr 3 by Timo

posted February 22nd 2008

Conductor Atso Almila spent two weeks in a row with us. This week has been totally different from last week’s Georg Ots hit parade.

Besides conductor, Atso is also a composer and he just finished his third symphony on February 2, 2008. We just premiered it 2 hours ago! Creating something from the scratch is very special and includes the first run through, which musicians are eagerly waiting for. As far as I am concerned, it is also a little nerve-wracking to composer, who cannot be quite sure how it all turned out after all. This came clear during the first rehearsal. When Atso started to conduct his own work, he lost the conducting pattern already in the first measure, which is unheard of to a mature conductor. “This is how nervous you get with your own music”, Almila said and laughed and we just took it from there. We are old friends, Atso and this orchestra, and the feeling was very casual. After the first run-through everyone was convinced that we will have an exciting premiere ahead of us.

Almila’s composition is a symphony in one movement and without seeing the score I better not to analyze it deeper. However, I recognized different sections reminding those of slow or scherzo-like movements. I was convinced that the name symphony in this case represents the counterpoints of tempos and thematic materials which are clearly present. The ending accelerando was very convincing and based on tradition, even though the material was true Almila and his characteristics.
Almila also uses human voice, such as musicians’ speech, mumbling, whistles and yells as well as hand claps and stomping. These elements bring drama in the piece. No wonder, since Almila is a known music director and composer in musical theatre, and that’s where he might have found these elements into his music.

The feeling on stage was good and seems like the audience shared it with us, since they rewarded the composer and us with heartfelt applauds.

This week was extremely fun because besides this premiere we got to accompany a colleague as a soloist. Jyrki Lasonpalo, one of our leaders had dug his hands into Tchaikovsky Violin concerto. Once again I cannot but say how much excitement this causes, because you are rooting for your colleague. Lasonpalo is an exceptional violinist and performed many times as a soloist with our orchestra, but still we anxiously waited for his performance. And he did exceptionally well, of course. Performing in front of the large audience is challenging and takes a lot of technical and emotional control. We all were very proud of our colleague-Go Jyrki!!!

I think we played Grieg, too, but last night there were many unusual aspects on stage leaving Mr. Grieg on a shadow.

Opus 1 nr 4 by Laura

posted February 18th 2008

Last time writing my blog entry I was playing violin wearing a mouse-hat. Well, this time I am playing a pink (!) recorder.
What is going on?

Well, it is not (as it might first seem) that my position as a violinist has dramatically changed, but last week we were working at Kasakkamäki school with our orchestra´s education project "Let´s compose!". So while the rest of our orchestra was enjoying the Georg Ots highlights, I was back at school with some of my colleagues and with about 50 composers. This means that children from Kasakkamäki school are composing (with us) a brand new composition which will have its world premiere performance on Wednesday 20th February at Sibelius Hall.
(more information about the project at http://www.sinfonialahti.fi/savelletaan/)

Some extra challenge for this project was given by the fact that not only the children´s composition will have its world premiere but also "the core work" itself which orchestra is going to perform for children is brand new Symphony number 3 by Atso Almila. That means that Wednesday´s event is going to be really interesting and refreshing experience. Almila´s symphony was finished 3rd of February and children´s composition will have its final shape on the very day of its world premiere.

So if you really want to be on the edge, come to listen "Let´s compose!" main event on Wednesday 20th February 17.30 at Sibelius Hall.
---
I must mention that last week was not only a week of playing a pink recorder.
Some extra spice for last week was given by Sunday´s chamber music concert with Schubert´s String Quintet. That music is so profound in everything and still always sweet. It is really beyond the words and I will not try to describe it here. Just to say, playing it meant a lot to me, thanks once more to my colleagues for sharing the experience!
-Laura

 

 

Opus 4 nr 1 "If you sit on Hindemith, you kill it"

posted February 10th 2008

The quote in the headline comes from Maestro Yan Pascal Tortelier, the well-known gentleman who conducted Lahti Symphony's concert on February 7th. Paul Hindemith's music is unfortunately often regarded as somewhat dry and academic, but this week's task – performing his Symphonic Metamorphoses – served as a reminder that this assumption is not always justified. Maestro Tortelier – in his first concert ever with us – was clearly inspired by this music and directed us into the many colours and characters of a work that includes such contrasting elements as chinese traditional music (in the second movement, suitably titled "Turandot"), splendid orchestral celebration almost reminding us of space adventure movies, and flat-out jazz. Challenging, interesting and fun music.

We in Lahti are only now getting back to "business as usual" as far as concerts go. January was very different: as regular readers will already know, the orchestra took two weeks and dedicated them to performing for kids. During these two weeks, I was mostly away from Lahti, visiting two other Finnish orchestras. First to Oulu, where I conduct regularly, and this time also acted as soloist in works by Mozart and Beethoven. After this highly classical programme, my week with the Pori Sinfonietta offered something very different: a highly exciting and also exotic new symphony by Lahti's composer-in- residence, Kalevi Aho. As his symphonies go, this one numbers 14, and it features a percussion soloist playing "ethnic" drums, such as djembe and darabuka. A wonderful addition to chamber-orchestra repertoire!

Back to Lahti. Thursday's concert featured another first-time Lahti visitor: pianisti Ronald Brautigam. I knew him already for two reasons: his wonderful recordings for BIS Records of Beethoven's piano sonatas, and also becausewe once played together, at the wedding of our mutual friends. The piece was a movement from one of Mozart's piano concertos, and I whether any wedding had ever been privileged with piano playing of that calibre... and this week, Ronald's performance of Mendelssohn's first piano Concerto had us all excited. Many of his recordings are played on a fortepiano, and that comes through even when he is sitting next to a regular concert grand, such as this week. Perfect Mendelssohn, in my opinion!

All in all, a very relaxed and pleasant, yet serious week of wonderful music. And finally a thank-you to principal horn Pertti Kuusi for suggesting the beautiful piece by Castelnuovo-Tedesco that opened the programme! I believe it may have been a first for everyone on stage.

P.S. A small piece of advertising: the March 6th classicLive webcast – Lahti Symphony's Järnefelt Concert – will be a very special one: the works performed in this concert will be heard for the first time in about 100 years. So make sure you "tune in" to this historic webcast!

-Jaakko

 

 

Opus 3 nr 2

posted February 2nd 2008

 

Thursday, January 31.

What a chunk of a piece that Berlioz is! It’s very hard to define what the work actually is. It’s not an opera, nor it is quite an oratorio or a symphonic poem. Call it whatever you want it is true Berlioz, overwhelmingly colorful music with no limitations. Well – obviously in the orchestration too: four (4!) bassoons and double timpani etc!

Lilli sang really well like the other soloists too. The big choir took the audience by surprise singing suddenly offstage from the echo chambers. Once again the wonderful acoustical possibilities of the hall made me proud. It wouldn’t have worked in most of the halls in the world that well.

Naturally I was following the double basses with extra care and was happy to hear the famous attack growl frequently especially in the third part.

The truly weird part of my concert experience was the fact that I was now a normal member of the audience of my own orchestra in our home hall. I checked my overcoat, bought the program leaflet and queued for my drink like everybody else. No extra privileges but no duties either. And - this time on purpose, no inside information about the upcoming performance. Have to say: I quite liked it.

There was an intermission!

Petri

 

 

 

Opus 3 nr 1

posted January 31st 2008

Wednesday January 30.

This morning at the Finnish National Opera, in the beginning of the main rehearsal of Rossini’s Cenerentola I realized that it was Lilli Paasikivi singing the name role. I sought her up at the intermission and wondered if she is going to make it to Lahti for the evening rehearsals of Berlioz’s Romeo & Juliet because of the snow storm. She sang Cenerentola today and did it very well and I’m sure she’ll do beautifully in Lahti too.

Just can’t wait. It is so seldom you get to hear your own orchestra live in full. The only moments for listening are normally when the string sections are cut for smaller pieces and there is a chance to sneak into the auditorium during rehearsals. It’s not the same, I say!

I’ve done all the preparations for my first Lahti trip since joining the opera orchestra for this spring season. I managed to get a free shift from the pit for tomorrow evening and got a ticket from my favorite second balcony in the Sibelius Hall. Special treat is that I will be able to drive in my friend’s car from and back to Helsinki.

Since there’ll be only one big piece in the concert the only thing that worries me is if there’s no intermission. I need that time to chat with colleagues!

more after the concert…

Petri

 

Opus 2 nr 2

posted January 25th 2008

Today we got to see how great our dress choices were. And they were!

Even though in our imagination we traveled around the world, my thoughts in Hämeenlinna were focused on local culture. We have visited the new hall of Verkatehdas (see www.verkatehdas.fi) for about 5 times, and I have a feeling this center of music hall and movie theatre with other services is becoming the living room of locals, just like the Sibelius Hall in Lahti. Besides it too is located by the water - congratulations to the city of Hämeenlinna!

Although our musical offerings today were aimed at children, there were many grown-ups there, too. Parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, godmothers and cousins and, a lot of children, of course. Girls’ choir Aurorina and the Boy Choir of Hämeenlinna had combined their forces and sang along with their actors and soloists directly to our hearts. Every time we do these combined projects it leaves us in great mood, and that was the case now also.

Coming back home was slow and painful, since all southern Finland was hit by a blizzard, but that’s another story…
Next week we are back in the theme of this season: Shakespeare and classical music. We’ll perform Hector Berlioz version of the most famous love story of all times – Romeo and Juliet.

 

Opus 2 nr 1

posted January 24th 2008

We are now back and working on the children’s project, as Laura promised last week. This time our theme is the Flying Carpet - travelling around the world with this low-emission vehicle.

It’s really fun to work with a school choir and to see kids perform to kids! I have a feeling there is a connection there, totally unknown to us adults. What is important is the joy of rehearsing fun songs, which conductor and arranger Petri Juutilainen has arranged by cleverly mixing familiar stylistic elements from different cultures together. No matter whether we are in Greece or Brazil, you can definitely tell the place just by listening to the sounds. The dress code in our weekly schedule said: “Middle-Eastern dress” and most of us agreed that finding a right dress or suit will be one of the most challenging tasks of the week.

I enjoy playing in Hämeenlinna, where the hall is built in an old factory. This remodeled factory is now a really nice cultural center. When we visit this Verkatehdas about 10 times per year, as our contract with the City of Hämeenlinna states, it is great that one of these concerts is dedicated to children.

So, soon we’ll get to compare each other’s dress choices and also find out, if our audience will join us in our imaginative trip around the world.

-Timo

 

 

Opus 1 nr 3

posted January 18th 2008

And finally what are the thoughts after having played all those eight concerts for children?

I truly think that these concerts what we do for the little ones are in a way most important ones what we overall do. It is not only about raising new generation of listeners to our concerts. I think it is the fact that the music really is a channel to manage your feelings and emotions in a healthy way, and if we can help some children to find this possibility, maybe it could be at least a little help to prevent such unhappy destinies what we unfortunately sometimes must witness around us.

Last November a group from our orchestra was doing a music education project (Read about “Let’s compose!” on www.sinfonialahti.fi/savelletaan/) in a school here in Lahti at the same time when that tragic Jokela school shooting took place. Then I strongly realized how important it is to do these projects. It is really a perfect opportunity for the entire class to work together as one group not leaving anybody outside.

Then on the other hand, after these eight concerts…

I am going slightly mad. Last evening just before falling to sleep the last recollection was one of the children’s songs from the concert program and when I woke up it was first thing in my mind again… So, maybe these eight concerts were enough for now and I seriously need to change the tune in my head.

Next week Lahti Symphony Orchestra is playing more children’s concerts in Hämeenlinna (with a different program). Timo will continue from here. I’ll be back later! Cheers,

-Laura

Photos by Teemu Kirjonen

 

 

 

Opus 1 nr 2

posted January 17h 2008

On Wednesday 16th of January: Second really demanding thing on this week is getting up early. First concert starts at 8.45 in the morning. I personally find this almost impossible. Well, physically I can be there but probably (and most likely) mind is still asleep. But today I had this brilliant idea; tomorrow morning I will definitely wear my mouse hat, that way my morning’s brain capacity (little and very slow) and my character as a mouse, will be perfectly balanced. Because really, what can you expect from a person who wears a (toothless) mouse hat?

-Laura

 

Opus 1 nr 1

posted January 15th 2008

This Monday’s rehearsal started with a very difficult task; we all had to decide which animal hat to wear for this week’s concerts. It is a pity really that these concerts are not online, since it is quite rare to see for example in a cello section a parrot, a bunny, a wolf etc playing harmonically together.

Well, I decided to add a bit more challenge for this week so I took two different hats. (On the other words, I actually couldn’t decide which hat to choose, so the morning’s task was indeed too hard for me…) This means that on some of the concerts I will be a dog (something like a dachshund with long ears) and then on some of them I will be a mouse. A toothless mouse in fact, since the teeth were kind of bothering my seeing the music so I used some scotch-tape and put them away. Now, what I must learn this week is how to make a difference in my playing, depending on which animal I am at the moment. So as you can imagine it is really demanding to be a professional musician!

-Laura

(This week Lahti Symphony Orchestra presents eight children’s concerts with animal theme. Concerts are conducted by Petri Komulainen)

 

Jaakko Kuusisto is concertmaster of the Lahti Symphony Orchestra and principal guest conductor of the Oulu Symphony Orchestra. He is also active as a soloist, chamber musician and composer/arranger. Jaakko is also a fan of new ways to enjoy music, such as this website and his brand-new iPod. In the summer, Jaakko leaves all that behind and goes boating.

Timo Ahtinen's double bass has been heard with the Lahti Symphony since 1985. He received his diploma and Master of Music degree from the Sibelius-Academy and studied with Franco Petracchi in Italy. As a versatile musician, Timo has been playing in various combos including contemporary orchestras and jazz-bands. Timo considers classicLive a great friendship between traditional music and new technology. During his free time he likes to read and spend time with his 9- and 12-years old boys. Cooking is one of his hobbies and quite often you can hear Timo discuss the secrets of barbequing with his colleagues.

Laura Kokko has been playing violin in Lahti Symphony Orchestra since autumn 2005. Before that she worked in Turku Philharmonic Orchestra. Laura made her violin diploma June 2004 in Budapest's Franz Liszt Academy of Music. After living in Budapest for three years, it is definitely one of her favourite cities! Laura is happy that through classicLive it is now possible to listen at home Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra! Laura is also an active chamber musician.
Her hobbies include literature, she has all the time at least 2 or 3 books on her night table and she just loves old libraries and bookshops. Laura also enjoys fine arts (Matisse had such a great line!) and jogging. As a hobby she also studies philosophy at the University of Turku.

Double bassist Petri Lehto joined Lahti Symphony Orchestra 1987 after studying with prof. Olli Kosonen at Sibelius-Academy, Helsinki and with Maestro Franco Petracchi at Geneva Conservatory, Switzerland. Petri Lehto has also freelanced substantially with US and UK orchestras during his leaves of absence from Lahti. Did you know Petri can sing, too? He has performed as a tenor soloist with several orchestras and also recorded for BIS Company and made his Proms debut last year. Petri Lehto’s hobbies include traveling, fusion cooking, wines (not collecting!) and Russian language. For this spring season Petri Lehto has swopped jobs with a colleague and plays with the Finnish National Opera Orchestra. This provides us with a nice perspective when he writes about his home orchestra concerts he follows live or at classicLive.