The Cleveland Orchestra, Franz Welser-Möst & Víkingur Ólafsson

Helsinki Music Centre, Concert Hall
Wed 28.8.2024 19:00
Duration: 2h, intermission

The Cleveland Orchestra, one of the world’s most renowned symphony orchestras, will perform at Helsinki Festival.

The Cleveland Orchestra, one of the world’s most prestigious symphony orchestras and one of the “Big Five” United States orchestras, returns to Finland for the first time in nearly 60 years. The orchestra, which has rarely visited the Nordic countries, last performed in Finland in 1965. 

Founded in 1918, the orchestra enters its 23rd season led by top Austrian conductor Franz Welser-Möst, who also led the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in a memorable performance at the 2015 Helsinki Festival.

The Cleveland Orchestra is regarded as one of the world’s best orchestras, and in 2020, The New York Times named it the best in America. Under Welser-Möst, the orchestra has been honed to its technical and artistic peak.

The Cleveland Orchestra will perform Robert Schumann’s Piano Concerto and Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony in the concert at Helsinki Music Centre. The concerto is Schumann’s only piano concerto and one of the most beloved solo concertos of the Romantic era. The soloist is perhaps the most famous piano superstar of the moment, Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson. At the 2023 Festival, Ólafsson performed a solo recital to a sold-out audience.

The Cleveland Orchestra
Franz Welser-Möst, conductor
Víkingur Ólafsson, piano

Robert Schumann: Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 54
Pyotr Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 5 in E minor, Op. 64

Allegro affettuoso (A minor)
Intermezzo: Andantino grazioso (F major)
Allegro vivace (A major)

Robert Schumann had little patience for the hordes of virtuoso pianists who showed off their brilliant finger work and dazzled audiences all over Europe on the new-fangled instruments that were much bigger and brighter than anything Mozart had known. Even Beethoven sensed the potential of the new upper octaves, which could be heard (though not by himself, of course) at the back of large halls and could compete on equal terms with the modern orchestra. Schumann’s early piano music felt the lure of this brilliant style, but he soon championed the cause of expression and feeling in the face of virtuosity and brilliance. 

Responding to a particular concerto that offended him in 1839, Schumann wrote: “We must await the genius who will show us in a new and brilliant way how orchestra and piano may be combined, and how the soloist, dominant at the keyboard, may unfold the wealth of his instrument and his art while the orchestra, no longer a mere spectator, may interweave its manifold facets into the scene.”

Schumann’s gift for prophecy, so accurate when proclaiming the genius of the young Chopin and the young Brahms, was this time pointing with equal accuracy to himself. In 1839, he had in fact begun to sketch a piece for piano and orchestra for his beloved wife Clara, a pianist and composer in her own right, and it was finished in 1841 under the title Fantasie. There was no opportunity to perform it, however, and three publishers declined to print it. Four years later, he added an Andantino section linking to a Rondo, to make a three-movement concerto. In this form, premiered by Clara in Dresden in December 1845, it found success everywhere — and came to be one of the best-loved of Romantic piano concertos.

The first movement betrays the character of a fantasie in many ways, since the main theme, heard first in the winds with the piano’s immediate response, reappears in many guises. It serves as the second subject in the major key, now on the clarinet over the piano’s rippling accompaniment, and also as an interruption before the development, when the theme is passed back-and-forth between the clarinet and the piano in a marvelously languorous mood. Finally, after the cadenza, it appears in a brisk closing coda.

As a model of how soloist and orchestra may be combined, the middle movement Intermezzo splits its theme between these forces, which continue the conversation until it is time for a new theme. This is presented by the cellos with elegant interjections from the soloist. At the end, as the movement fades to nothing, oboes and clarinets bring back the first movement’s main theme in a hesitant manner, recalling the equivalent moment in Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto (No. 5), before the finale bursts in with new energy.

The last movement’s theme is a thinly disguised version of the concerto’s opening theme, and the soloist is soon engaged in traversing the keyboard with a stream of notes that comes close to the domain of virtuosity. But the melodic sweep is always present, and a contrasting theme exploits a different kind of skill, the control of rhythmic dislocation. Schumann’s passion for the teasing effects of cross-rhythms puts both soloist and orchestra on their mettle, but they emerge from it with a new rush of energy that drives them together to the close.

Text: Hugh Macdonald

Andante – Allegro con anima – Molto più tranquillo
Andante cantabile, con alcuna licenza
Valse. Allegro moderato
Finale: Andante maestoso – Allegro vivace – Meno mosso

Pyotr Tchaikovsky composed his fifth symphony in summer 1885. In his three last symphonies (Nos. 4–6), he found a solution that enabled the expression of important personal and emotional contents; after a long struggle, Tchaikovsky managed to put them together in a satisfactory manner in traditional symphony form. The premiere took place in Saint Petersburg on 17 November 1888 with Tchaikovsky conducting.

Correspondence with the wealthy widow Nadezhda von Meck provided Tchaikovsky with financial and emotional support. The only condition was that they should never meet. More than 1,100 letters over 14 years offer a unique perspective on this very artistically and emotionally vulnerable composer.

The correspondence tells of an oversensitive and insecure composer, whose confidence grew as the composition moved forward. The comment “This will be my best composition so far” was followed by a drop in mood, during which Tchaikovsky suspected that his compositional creativity had run dry or that he had been “played out”. As far as the fifth symphony is concerned, only after the work had received international praise was he able to admit that “perhaps it is not so bad after all”. As strange as it may sound to a modern listener, several early critics also lambasted the work. The symphony became a part of the standard repertoire only gradually.

Tchaikovsky admitted that his fourth and six symphonies contained programmatic elements but claimed that the fifth symphony was not programmatic. However, the symphony’s progression – its overall form and the repetition of the key motto theme with dramatic transformations – seems to refer to an extramusical topic. The work drafts contain the composer’s side notes which indicate that the symphony depicts a struggle against fate. The outcome of this struggle sounds notably more victorious than in the fourth and sixth symphonies marked by tragedy.

The motto theme, also dubbed fate theme, appears in the guise of a funeral march in the first movement. This melody then becomes a unifying theme for all four movements. The horn and oboe solos of the slow-tempo second movement are interrupted by the fierce eruptions of the motto theme. The third movement, a ternary form waltz, ends with the repetition of the motto theme and a surprising fortissimo cadence. The finale begins with a slow-tempo exposition transforming the motto into major. After a long struggle and a dramatic general pause, the theme returns one final time – now as an impressive victory march.

Text: Pekka Miettinen

Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation

The Cleveland Orchestra thanks these corporations and individuals for generously supporting the ensemble’s tour performances: Raiffeisenlandesbank Oberösterreich, Jones Day, Dr. and Mrs. Wolfgang Berndt, Drs. Wolfgang and Gabi Eder, Dr. and Mrs. Robert Ehrlich, Mr. and Mrs. Michael Gröller, Dr. and Mrs. Herbert Kloiber, Miba AG and Dr. and Mrs. Peter Mitterbauer, Park-Ohio Holdings, SPÄNGLER PRIVATSTIFTUNG, Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Umdasch, and Susanne Wamsler and Paul Singer.