Love Song – Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, Jukka-Pekka Saraste, Momo Kodama & Helena Juntunen
Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra
Jukka-Pekka Saraste, conductor
Helena Juntunen, soprano
Momo Kodama, piano
Cynthia Millar, Ondes Martenot
Dasha Pears, photography
Program:
Jean Sibelius: The Tempest No. 4, Chorus of the Winds
Sauli Zinovjev: Erasure (Tarpeeton pyyhitään yli) , world premiere
Olivier Messiaen: Turangalîla
Discussion:
Pre-concert discussion at 6:15 PM in the foyer of the Helsinki Music Centre.
Composer Sauli Zinovjev and the Artistic Director of Helsinki Festival, Johanna Freundlich, will take part in the conversation.
Jean Sibelius: Chorus of the Winds (The Tempest Suite No. 2, Op. 109)
Jean Sibelius’s music for William Shakespeare’s The Tempest garnered significant attention at its premiere at the Royal Danish Theatre in Copenhagen in 1926 — it was described as a meeting of two geniuses. The incidental music consists of 26 short pieces, from which Sibelius later assembled two orchestral suites. The second suite opens with Chorus of the Winds, a delicate, impressionistic moment.
Soon after The Tempest and Tapiola (both 1926), Sibelius largely fell silent as a composer. The richly imaginative Tempest music showcases an unceasing inventiveness, which only deepens the mystery surrounding the so-called “Silence of Ainola.”
Sauli Zinovjev: Erasure (Tarpeeton pyyhitään yli)
“Erasure is a work consisting of a prologue and nine songs I have composed to texts by Mirkka Rekola, where external images of nature intertwine with inner conflict.
The open space at the beginning condenses, and the seemingly harmonious landscape begins to crack as the tension of the piece increases. The perspective deepens and sharpens to the point of bare and tearing climax. Eventually, the music breathes, expands, and fades into a wordless silence — like a trace left in air or water.
The composition is based on various songs I have written over time to Rekola’s texts, which have grown and evolved into part of this work and its dramatic arc.”
– Sauli Zinovjev
Mirkka Rekola (1931–2014) published her first poetry collection Vedessä palaa in 1954. Her extensive body of work, which includes poetry, essays, and short prose “masks,” continued until 2011, when her final poetry collection Kuulen taas äänesi was published. Rekola is one of the key poets of Finnish post-war modernism and is celebrated for her renewal of the aphorism form.
Her poetry offers readers a new way to see and experience the world. The everyday shore teems with wonders, trees and birds become companions, and the self finds a profound connection with the other. The ordinary is set in motion — a stone lifts on the wings of words like a swan. Rekola was both a seer and a thinker, relentlessly seeking ways out of global dead ends.
Olivier Messiaen: Turangalîla-Symphony
“A hymn to joy and a love song” — this is how Olivier Messiaen described his Turangalîla-Symphony. The work’s gigantic proportions and overflowing expressive means point toward something beyond the human: limitless, dazzling joy. The theme of love, too, is portrayed as fatal, irresistible, overwhelming, and devastating — in the spirit of Tristan and Isolde.
Among Messiaen’s mostly religiously themed output, the Turangalîla-Symphony is part of his so-called Tristan trilogy. In these rare love-themed works, love is presented both as ideal and selfless, and as physical and passionate.
The Sanskrit-derived title combines two concepts: “Turanga” refers to time, movement, and rhythm; “Lîla” means play, or sacred action — such as creation, destruction, or re-creation. Messiaen encountered the word turangalîla in a 13th-century catalogue of Indian musical rhythms by Sharngadeva, which greatly expanded his rhythmic vocabulary — and influenced many later composers as well.
In addition to Eastern influences and Catholicism, bird song was central to Messiaen’s musical identity. He considered birdsong a form of music untouched by civilization. According to Helsingin Sanomat critic Seppo Heikinheimo, the repetition found in Turangalîla represented a kind of precursor to minimalism:
“Whereas minimalists manage only hollow looping, Messiaen’s music possesses a hypnotic quality.”
Messiaen composed the Turangalîla-Symphony between 1946–1948 on a commission from the Koussevitzky Foundation for the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Initially, he planned a traditional four-movement structure (Nos. 1, 4, 6, 10). He later added three more Turangalîla movements and eventually completed the work with Nos. 5, 8, and 10.
The orchestration is enormous and includes a virtuosic piano part and the ondes Martenot, an early electronic instrument whose ethereal wail forms a vital part of the symphony’s sonic identity.
In his notes, Messiaen highlights four cyclical themes that reappear in various movements. Each movement also contains unique thematic material, and the stylistic range is vast. Harmonies stretch from simple triads to full atonality. Even early serialism is hinted at, especially in Turangalîla II, which uses chromatic tone rows with corresponding rhythmic values.
Messiaen’s compositional method was based on the systematic and rational integration of diverse influences. With this, he created a unique and immediately recognizable musical language, earning a place alongside the great 20th-century masters — Debussy, Stravinsky, and Bartók.