Programme Notes Season
Opening Fri 12 september 2025 • 20.15
PROGRAMME
conductor Dalia Stasevska soprano and nyckelharpa Aphrodite Patoulidou
Anna Meredith (1978)
Nautilus (2011/2021)
Jean Sibelius (1865–1957)
Scene with Cranes, op. 44 nr. 2 (1906)
Luciano Berio (1925–2003)
Folk Songs for voice and orchestra (1964/1973)
• Black Is the Color (John Jacob Niles, USA)
• I Wonder as I Wander (John Jacob Niles, USA)
• Loosin yelav (Armenia)
• Rossignolet du bois (France)
• A la femminisca (Sicily, Italy)
• La donna ideale (Luciano Berio, Italy)
• Ballo (Luciano Berio, Italy)
• Motettu de tristura (Sardinia, Italy)
• Malurous qu’o uno fenno (Auvergne, France)
• Lo fiolairé (Auvergne, France)
• Azerbeidzjaans Love Song (Azerbaijan)
intermission
Aphrodite Patoulidou
Improvisation for voice and nyckelharpa
Jean Sibelius
Luonnotar, Symphonic Poem op. 70 (1913)
Ottorino Respighi (1879–1936)
Pini di Roma, Symphonic Poem (1924)
• I pini di Villa Borghese (The Pines of the Villa Borghese) – Allegretto vivace
• Pini presso una catacomba (Pines Near a catacomb) – Lento
• I pini del Gianicolo (The Pines of the Janiculum)
– Lento
• I pini della via Appia (The Pines of Via Appia)
– Tempo di marcia
Concert ends at around 22.15
Cover: Beachy Head Lighthouse, Eastbourne.
Photo James Eades (Unsplash)
Most recent performances by our orchestra: Meredith Nautilus: first performance by our orchestra
Sibelius Scene with Cranes: first performance by our orchestra
Berio Folk Songs: Nov 1995, mezzo-soprano Caren van Oijen, conductor Daniel Harding
Sibelius Luonnotar: May 2019, soprano Helena Juntunen, conductor Jukka-Pekka Saraste
Respighi Pini di Roma: Jun 2018, conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin
One hour before the start of the concert, Jan Willem van Ree will give an introduction (in Dutch) to the programme, admission €7,50. Tickets are available at the hall, payment by debit card. The introduction is free for Vrienden.
Ilmatar (also known as Luonnotar). Painting (1860) by Wilhelm Ekman, coll. Finnish National Gallery.
Wanderlust and the return home
The concert programme that opens our new season reaches from the depths of the oceans up to the furthest heavens, meeting folk music traditions from various parts of the world on its journey across many countries and musical cultures.
A squid-like mollusc
In her work Nautilus, Scottish composer Anna Meredith pulls out all the stops from the start. Like all Meredith’s music, this work touches on many styles and musical worlds, ranging from contemporary classical, via film soundtrack and electronic, to experimental rock. Nautilus, named after the squid-like mollusc that inhabits a beautiful spiralformed shell, originated in 2011 as a purely electronic composition. Up to then, Meredith had composed only acoustic works. She would later explain that ‘This shift was my way to reclaim some power over my writing, making albums where I would be in complete control. Nautilus was written as sort of call to arms (for myself!). It’s a lovely full circle for this piece to now be rearranged back to an orchestral form.’ This orchestral version dates from 2021, commissioned by the Finnish Lahti Symphony Orchestra. Its first performance was conducted by Dalia Stasevska.
A flight of cranes
From the turbulences of Meredith’s deep-sea music we move to a totally different world with Scene with Cranes. The work is based on the music that Jean Sibelius wrote for the play Kuolema (‘Death’) written by his brother-in-law Arvid Järnefelt. The Finnish composer would rework the first movement of this incidental music into his celebrated Valse triste. Later still he combined the third and fourth movements into the Scene with Cranes, thereby creating a concert piece of fragility and great expressiveness. Whilst in many cultures the crane symbolises freedom and eternal youth, in the Finnish tradition it represents the soul, and the passage from life to death. Sibelius depicts the cranes flying high in the sky with hushed strings; their occasional melancholic cry represented by the clarinets.
A sampler of folk songs
Whereas Sibelius embraced purely Finnish tradition, mythology and folk music, Italian composer Luciano Berio sought inspiration partly in the tradition and folk music of various parts of the world. This is particularly evident from a work often considered atypical of his oeuvre, his 1964 Folk Songs. In this work Berio brought together eleven songs from the United States, Armenia, France, Italy and Azerbaijan that all had their roots in folklore. He arranged them in his own style for mezzo-soprano Cathy Berberian – his then wife – claiming that he always felt uneasy listing to folk songs accompanied on the piano. Berio subjected the folk songs to his own ‘metrical and harmonic interpretation’. The instrumental accompaniment – originally for chamber ensemble and later reworked for large orchestra - had a very precise function
Umbrella Pines in the Villa Borghese, Rome. Painting (1839) by William James Müller, coll. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
for Berio: ‘It is suggestive of, and comments upon, everything that forms the expressive or cultural roots of each song.’ Berio’s wish was for these arrangements to contribute to the preservation of folk songs. A nice detail: La donna ideale (no. 6) and Ballo (no. 7) are not priorly existing folk songs at all. Berio composed them himself in 1947 in the spirit of the Italian folk songs.
gives a voice to his protagonist. The work, completed in 1913, had been commissioned by Finnish soprano Aino Ackté. The singer was impressed with the work, but also apprehensive. ‘It blew my socks off’, she wrote to the composer. ‘But at the same time I worry that I cannot match its demands, because it is insanely difficult and my sense of pitch, which is usually so reliable, may desert me.’ However, the soprano overcame her fear to sing the solo part at the work’s premiere.
Whilst in many cultures the crane symbolises freedom and eternal youth, in the Finnish tradition it represents the soul
From improvisation to composition
Composers such as Sibelius and Berio may well have taken inspiration from folk songs, but these folk songs in turn were often based on improvisations. Improvisations like these, rarely heard in a concert of classical music, are the specialisation of Greek soprano Aphrodite Patoulidou. The singer accompanies herself on the nyckelharpa, an old Swedish instrument related to the hurdygurdy, but played with a bow. In this programme her improvisation forms the introduction to Luonnotar, a symphonic poem by Sibelius based on an allegorical creation myth from Finnish folklore. Luonnotar is the Daughter of the Air who descends to roam the seas of the earth. When a storm brews, she calls on the help of Ukko, Father of the Sky, who sends her a sea bird. The bird’s eggs shatter and their fragments eventually take the form of the sky, sun, moon and the stars.
Luonnotar differs from Sibelius’s other symphonic works in the way that he literally
Centuries-old pine trees
As with Berio and Sibelius, Ottorino Respighi also drew inspiration from folk music and children’s songs, but was no less inspired by the music of Baroque dance and Gregorian chant. Many of these influences come together in his Pines of Rome. Respighi composed this four-movement symphonic poem in 1923 in tribute to the centuries-old pine trees that graced the Italian capital. The first movement depicts children dancing and playing in the park of the Villa Borghese. The second movement evokes, with a serene hymn, the tranquillity of a subterranean cemetery. In the third movement we find ourselves on the Janiculum Hill, listening to a nightingale singing in the trees. The score specifies that the birdsong should be played in the concert hall from a gramophone record, something of a novelty in Respighi’s time. In the final movement, which depicts the pines lining the Appian Way, the brass section plays fanfares, just as the opening work of this programme launched with a fanfare. The programme comes full circle, ending a journey of adventure across all the world’s oceans as we finally return home.
Paul Janssen
Dalia Stasevska • conductor
Born: Kyiv, Ukraine
Current position: Chief Conductor Lahti Symphony Orchestra, Artistic Director International Sibelius Festival, Principal Guest Conductor BBC Symphony Orchestra
Education: violinist and composition at Tampere Conservatoire; violin, viola and conducting (with Jorma Panula and Leif Segerstam) at the Sibelius Academy, Helsinki
Breakthrough: debut BBC Proms 2019
Subsequently: guest appearances Philadelphia Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Czech Philharmonic, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin
Awards: Order of Princess Olga of the III degree (Ukraine), BBC Music Magazine’s Personality of the Year 2023, Alfred Kordelin Prize 2022, Royal Philharmonic Society’s Conductor Award 2020 Debut Rotterdam Philharmonic: 2025
Aphrodite Patoulidou • soprano and nyckelharpa
Born: Thessaloniki, Greece
Education: voice with Angelica Cathariou (University of Macedona in Thessaloniki), Dinah Bryant (Royal Conservatory Brussels) and Aris Argiris (University for the Arts Berlin)
Breakthrough: 2018 in Barbara Hannigan’s Equilibrium Young Artists Initiative
Subsequently: solo appearances with Cleveland Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Münchner Philharmoniker, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, opera at the Staatsoper Berlin, La Monnaie, Teatro Real Madrid, Greek National Opera
Versatile: Aphrodite Patoulidou plays the guitar and the piano, was the lead singer of metal band Igorrr and acted in several short films; she is a photographer, a painter and a published poet
Debut Rotterdam Philharmonic: 2025
Photo: Veikko Kähkönen
Photo: Daniel Nartschick
Musicians Agenda
Fri 26 September 2025 • 20.15
Sun 28 September 2025 • 14.15
conductor Lahav Shani
soprano Elza van den Heever
alto Gerhild Romberger
tenor Daniel Behle
bass Kostas Smoriginas
chorus Laurens Symfonisch
Bruckner Te Deum
Bruckner Symphony No. 4 ‘Romantic’
Fri 3 October 2025 • 20.15
conductor Luis Castillo-Briceño
organ Cameron Carpenter
piano Ralph van Raat
Moussa A Globe Itself Infolding
Pinkham Piano Concerto ‘Nowhere and No-when’
Saint-Saëns Symphony No. 3 ‘Organ Symphony’
Thu 9 October 2025 • 20.00 (!)
Sun 12 October 2025 • 14.15
conductor Tarmo Peltokoski
violin Daniel Lozakovich
Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto Shostakovich Symphony No. 7 ‘Leningrad’
Fri 17 October 2025 • 20.15
Sun 19 October 2025 • 14.15
conductor Kazuki Yamada
piano Alexandre Kantorow
Takemitsu How Slow the Wind
Saint-Saëns Piano Concerto No. 5
‘Egyptian’
Berlioz Symphonie fantastique
Music for Breakfast 1
Sun 26 October 2025 • 10.30
Dudok in het Park musicians and programme: rpho.nl/en
Chief Conductor
Lahav Shani
Honorary Conductor
Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Principal Guest Conductor
Tarmo Peltokoski
First Violin
Marieke Blankestijn, Concert Master
Vlad Stanculeasa, Concert Master
Quirine Scheffers
Hed Yaron Meyerson
Saskia Otto
Arno Bons
Rachel Browne
Maria Dingjan
Marie-José Schrijner
Noëmi Bodden
Petra Visser
Sophia Torrenga
Hadewijch Hofland
Annerien Stuker
Alexandra van Beveren
Marie Duquesnoy
Giulio Greci
Second Violin
Charlotte Potgieter
Frank de Groot
Laurens van Vliet
Elina Staphorsius
Jun Yi Dou
Bob Bruyn
Eefje Habraken
Maija Reinikainen
Babette van den Berg
Melanie Broers
Tobias Staub
Sarah Decamps
Viola
Anne Huser
Roman Spitzer
Galahad Samson
José Moura Nunes
Kerstin Bonk
Janine Baller
Francis Saunders
Veronika Lénártová
Rosalinde Kluck
León van den Berg
Olfje van der Klein
Jan Navarro
Cello
Emanuele Silvestri
Gustaw Bafeltowski
Joanna Pachucka
Daniel Petrovitsch
Mario Rio
Eelco Beinema
Carla Schrijner
Pepijn Meeuws
Yi-Ting Fang
Killian White
Paul Stavridis
Double Bass
Matthew Midgley
Ying Lai Green
Jonathan Focquaert
Arjen Leendertz
Ricardo Neto
Javier Clemen Martínez
Flute
Juliette Hurel
Joséphine Olech
Manon Gayet
Flute/piccolo
Beatriz Baião
Oboe
Karel Schoofs
Anja van der Maten
Oboe/Cor Anglais
Ron Tijhuis
Clarinet
Julien Hervé
Bruno Bonansea
Alberto Sánchez García
Clarinet/ Bass Clarinet
Romke-Jan Wijmenga
Bassoon
Pieter Nuytten
Lola Descours
Marianne Prommel
Bassoon/ Contrabassoon
Hans Wisse
Horn
David Fernández Alonso
Felipe Freitas
Wendy Leliveld
Richard Speetjens
Laurens Otto
Pierre Buizer
Trumpet
Alex Elia
Adrián Martínez
Simon Wierenga
Jos Verspagen
Trombone
Pierre Volders
Alexander Verbeek
Remko de Jager
Bass trombone
Rommert Groenhof
Tuba
Martijn van Rijswijk
Timpani/ Percussion
Danny van de Wal
Ronald Ent
Martijn Boom
Harp
Albane Baron