Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra Wish Concert: Music & mind

Helsinki Music Centre, Concert Hall
Fri 23.8.2024 19:00
Duration: 1h 45min

Works for the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra’s wish concert has been requested by the President of the Republic of Finland Alexander Stubb, Professor Suvi Saarikallio and neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin.

Mr Levitin’s books popularising science, also published in Finnish, have been international bestsellers, and he has studied in particular the interaction between music and the brain. Suvi Saarikallio is a music educator and associate professor of psychology who has studied music, particularly from the perspectives of emotional regulation, psychological well-being and adolescent development.

Guests will gather at the Helsinki Music Centre to discuss music, the mind and the works they have chosen, performed by the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Jukka-Pekka Saraste. The bass soloist will be Victor Wooten, considered one of the best active bassists in the world. Wooten, a five-time Grammy winner, is known in the worlds of fusion jazz and funk, as well as for his classical music and pedagogical work.

Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra
Jukka-Pekka Saraste, conductor
Victor Wooten, bass

Benjamin Britten: The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra op. 34
Jean Sibelius: Aallottaret, op. 73

Victor Wooten: La Lección Tres
Jean Sibelius: Finlandia op. 26

Before the concert at 18:00, Victor Wooten, Daniel J. Levitin and Suvi Saarikallio will discuss Music & Mind and the evening’s works in the main Music Hall workshop. The discussion will be moderated by Marko Ahtisaari, Artistic Director of the Festival.

After the concert, at 21:00, Victor Wooten and Daniel J. Levitin will play together in the main club of the Music Centre and continue the discussion on the theme of Music & Mind. Admission to the club is free.

The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra is a composition by Benjamin Britten, commissioned for the short film Instruments of the Orchestra. The concert premiere was in Liverpool on 15 October 1946.
Britten based the work on Baroque composer Henry Purcell’s incidental music for the tragedy Abdelazer. The impressive Rondeau is first performed by the entire orchestra, then by the different sections: the woodwinds, the brass, the strings and the percussion.
In the next section, Britten offers variations of the theme for the individual instruments of each family: first the woodwinds, then the strings, the harp, the brass and the percussion. Particular attention is given to the timpani and xylophone, because they can be played at a given pitch.
In the final part of the work, the fugue, Britten recombines all the sections. The dancing fugue theme comes from the original Rondeau. Starting with the flutes and piccolo, each instrument plays a new melody, creating overlapping layers of music. This also provides an opportunity to showcase the composition techniques of previous centuries. In the finale, Purcell’s original theme once again appears in all of its magnificence, accompanied by the fugue theme.

Horizons
Targets

“In January 2019, I was working on an orchestral piece for Susanna Mälkki. When returning from a concert trip to the US, I had the pleasure of enjoying the ocean view on my right on a car ride from Los Angeles to San Diego and I felt new music flowing into my mind. The roadside viewpoints were called vistas; so I started calling my new work simply Vista.

I found inspiration once again in writing for an orchestra without soloists or vocal sections. I purposefully left out some orchestral instruments typical of my works, like the harp, the piano and the celesta. I also developed different timbres for the woodwinds and wanted to give them more to say than usual.

The composition process turned out to be challenging. I did manage to find a fresh timbre that is clearer without the pedal tones of the harp and piano. This makes the individual woodwinds and different weaves stand out better.

Horizons is based on horizontal lines and abstract textures, while Targets is more tensioned and dramatic, with plenty of physical energy. The structure is based on different ways of varying fairly succinct musical material. The energetic nature of Targets finally dissolves into a slow coda. During it, the music returns to the calm certainty of the opening bars.”
(Kaija Saariaho, Helsinki 24 August 2021)

“If you grow up in a family that speaks five languages, you speak five languages”, Victor Wooten says metaphorically of his childhood. His parents were musical omnivores, and Wooten would play anything by ear. Wooten began his formal musical education in sixth grade with the cello and became accustomed to classical music and playing in an orchestra.

Wooten’s first experience of writing for a symphony orchestra was the 2014 concerto The Bass Whisperer. The original idea was to bring the symphony and jazz-funk crowds together by using a musical language that combined both styles.

La Lección Tres (2021) is an evolution of Wooten’s earlier solo bass piece The Lesson. He first expanded it to an arrangement for a big band and then to a symphony orchestra.

The piece begins with a slow and searching introduction. The opening movement is dominated by an oboe melody, continued and expanded upon by a solo bass. A “circus-like” episode brings a new kind of energy into the music.
After the second movement’s quick waltz figuration, the percussion persuades the soloist to take on a percussive element before returning the bass to an accompanying role. After a major-key groove, the movement ends in uncertainty.

The energetic finale follows in the form of stubborn march rhythms. The middle of the movement is atmospheric and colourful. A march rhythm enhanced by snare drum ends the concert with a confident energy.

Sibelius took part in the protests following the first Russification years by composing the patriotic Song of the Athenians and The Breaking of the Ice on the Oulu River in 1899. He continued in this line with Music for Press Celebration Days. The work premiered on 4 November 1899 at the Swedish Theatre, conducted by the composer.

The last tableau was called Finland Awakens. A young Heikki Klemetti was among the audience and was moved by the defiant brass chords. “Much was lost in the celebrations of the evening and the audience did not seem to have time to comprehend the deeper meaning of the art”, he described in his review.

Conductor Robert Kajanus conducted four pieces of the work in December 1899. The finale was once again Finland Awakens. It seemed difficult to find a fitting title for the piece. It had been called, for example, Finland, Awakening of Finland, Finale, La Patrie or Vaterland. Finlandia became the established title following a proposal by Axel Carpelan in 1901.

Sibelius was surprised by the work’s popularity. “Why does this tone poem please the people? It is entirely built on themes ‘given from above’. Pure inspiration”, the composer wrote in his diary in 1911. Finlandia became an international success, and versions for all kinds of ensembles were made. The “jazzification” of the piece was, however, rejected by an insulted Sibelius.

Text: Pekka Miettinen