Programme Notes | Lemminkaïnen - 14 November 2021

Programme Notes

SIBELIUS FESTIVAL LEMMINKÄINEN SUN 14 NOVEMBER 2021 • 14.15

PROGRAMME conductor Jukka-Pekka Saraste soprano Helena Juntunen baritone Tommi Hakala Jean Sibelius 1865-1957 Orchestrated Songs • Var det en dröm (1902) • Flickan kom ifrån sinn älsklings möte (1901) • Den första kyssen (1900) • Norden (1917) Jean Sibelius The Bard, op. 64 [1913] Jean Sibelius Orchestrated Songs • Lastu lainehilla (1902) • Illalle (1898) • I natten (1903) • Svarta rosor (1899, orch.

Rautavaara) Interval Jean Sibelius Lemminkäinen Suite, op. 22 [1893-95, revised 1897, 1900; 1939] • Lemminkäinen and the Maidens of the Island • Lemminkäinen in Tuonela • The Swan of Tuonela • The Return of Lemminkäinen Concert ends at about 16.15 Most recent performances by our orchestra: Sibelius Orchestrated Songs: first performance Sibelius The Bard: first performance Sibelius Lemminkäinen: Jan 2015, conductor Pietrari Inkinen One hour before the start of the concert, musicologist Michel Khalifa will give an introduction to the programme, admission €5. Tickets are available at the hall, payment by debit card. The introduction is free for Vrienden. The introduction is in Dutch.

Jean Sibelius, circa 1895

Dreaming of a different reality From delicate poetry to the boldest gestures of legendary Finnish heroes, Jean Sibelius skilfully navigated various genres. The songs, symphonic poem and orchestral suite that make up this programme are proof of this.

Swedish poetry The songs of Jean Sibelius are not typical of his body of work. The fact that he wrote them at all is, for some people, as much of a surprise as, say, Verdi straying into the realm of string quartets: the natural home for Sibelius was the orchestra. Nevertheless, in the shelter of his symphonic work he was able to keep returning to the composition of songs. Interestingly, he thereby distanced himself from Finnish flag-waving: he based the lion’s share of this work on Swedish poetry. This was logical: he had been raised in the Swedish language and he remained attached to the poems that he had read in his youth. His other great passion – Finnish mythology – formed no part of his songs, since their grandeur was better portrayed by an orchestra. However, the few Finnish poems that he did set to music – including Lastu lainehilla and Illalle – did give him additional motivation. The Finnish language is richer in vowels, which enriched his melodic world.

Swedish or Finnish – for lyric writers they remain awkward languages, and this is one reason why one seldom hears such songs performed. Another reason is that the original versions (for voice and piano accompaniment) reveal Sibelius’ shortcomings as a composer for the piano. It was something he recognised himself: he would later rearrange many of these songs for the orchestra, to hugely impressive effect.

Sweltering tension In his work The Bard you can hear that Sibelius the song writer and Sibelius the orchestrator were not always mutually exclusive guises. Absent are the heroes of Finnish

A typical Sibelius moment: a fleeting, but compelling passage in which the vastness of the Finnish landscape appears crystal-clear in your mind’s eye mythology with their boldest of gestures, replaced by delicate poetry and an almost chamber-orchestra level of intimacy. Curiously enough, the song you would actually expect to hear from a bard is missing: whilst one hears a suggestive pluck of a harp, there is no identifiable melody soaring above it, only short, stumbling phrases. The effect is strange and oppressive. From the very first note one is seized by a sweltering tension that never lets go.

It also makes plain how Sibelius responded idiosyncratically to a genre that in 1913 already seemed outdated.

Since the ‘invention’ by Franz Liszt of the symphonic poem more than a half century earlier, dozens of composers passionately had followed this path, and after the almost cinematic scores of Richard Strauss there was very little new to contribute to the genre. Sibelius admired both Liszt as Strauss, but he avoided imitating both the melodrama of the former and the flashy narrative style of the latter. His symphonic poems are more panoramic than anecdotal: their focus lies mostly on the décor and atmosphere within which the events unfold. Even in the four tableaux that make up the Lemminkäinen Suite one seems to witness Lemminkäinen’s heroic deeds through a wide-angle lens.

The Finnish Don Juan As with Kullervo three years earlier, Sibelius based Lemminkäinen on the Kalevala, the national epic tale that sets out ancient Finnish legends in verse form. The stories are populated by heroes, hunters, magicians and mythical creatures – ideal material for nineteenth century composers dreaming of a different reality.

Originally, Sibelius planned to make the hero Lemminkäinen the subject of the first Kalevala opera in history.

He never achieved this ambition, because the work did not become an opera. He realised that he would never be able to match the operas of Wagner that he had experienced at Bayreuth. Furthermore, he sensed that the medium of the orchestra suited him better.

And this is how in or around 1895 – Sibelius would continue to tinker with the work – the Lemminkäinen Suite, with the Don Juan of Finnish mythology in the principal role, was born. Lemminkäinen’s seduction techniques are central to the first movement. The hero stays on an island to seduce an array of girls, until he is hunted down by the enraged menfolk.

The music itself is a powerful force in all movements: it is compelling even for those with no knowledge of the unfolding story. In terms of structure, the suite is already closely connected to the symphonies that Sibelius

Cover: Lemminkäinen at the Tuonela river. Pastel by Akseli Gallen-Kallela, 1920.

would soon write – abstract works that nevertheless seem to be about something.

Swans A subtle role is reserved in the suite for swans. At the very end of the first movement you hear a flock of swans flying overhead, represented by woodwind. A typical Sibelius moment: a fleeting, but compelling passage in which the vastness of the Finnish landscape appears crystal-clear in your mind’s eye. Years later he would raise the cry of the swans to epic proportions in his Fifth Symphony.

A lugubrious-sounding swan makes an appearance in the second movement, in the land of Tuonela – ‘the Hell of Finnish mythology’ - which Sibelius describes in the score as ‘encircled by black, rushing waters on which the Swan of Tuonela swims majestically, and sings’. This atmospheric movement, with its melancholic cor anglais solo, has become a stand-alone perpetual favourite. But maybe even more descriptive is the tribulation of Lemminkäinen in Tuonela. His efforts to kill the swan have failed; instead he is struck by a poisoned arrow and his dismembered body thrown into the water.

In the final movement, the hero arises from the dead in a typically absurdist ending that works only in old fairy tales and in more recent times in Monty Python: his dismembered body is fished out of the water by his mother and put back together again.

Lemminkäinen fights a few more heroic battles and returns home in triumph. The entire suite, but this final movement in particular, is full proof of Sibelius as a master orchestrator.

But it is the cries of the swans in the fading, closing bars of the first movement that are perhaps the most beautiful.

Michiel Cleij

Helena Juntunen, Soprano Born: Kiimiki, Finland

Photo: Felix Broede Jukka-Pekka Saraste, Conductor

Born: Heinola, Finland

Current position: founder and artistic advisor Lahti Symphony Orchestra; artistic director Tammisaari Festival; artistic director Fiskars Summer Festival, honorary conductor Philharmonic Orchestra Oslo, honorary conductor Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra Before: chief conductor WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Toronto Symphony Orchestra Education: Sibelius Academy Helsinki, conducting with Jorma Panula Awards: Pro Finlandia Prize, Sibelius Medaille, Finnish State Prize for Music

Education: Oulu Conservatorium with Airi Tokola; Sibelius Academy with Anita Välkki Awards: Lappeenranta Singing Competition (2002), Karita Mattila prize (2006) Breakthrough: 2002, as Marguerite in Gounods Faust during the Savonlinna Opera Festival After: Finnish National Opera, Opéra National de Lyon, La Monnaie Brussels, Theater an der Wien, State Opera Dresden, Opéra National du Rhin, Festival d’Aix en Provence, Wiener Festwochen Soloist with: Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, Berlin Philharmonic, BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra Debut Rotterdam Philharmonic: 2019

Tommi Hakala, Baritone Born: Riihimäki, Finland Education: Sibelius Academy Helsinki; State Academy of Music, Karlsruhe Awards: first prize Merikanto Competition Finland (2001) Breakthrough: 2003, BBC Singer of the World Award at the International Singing Competition Cardiff

Guest positions: London Philharmonic Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, Gewandhaus Orchestra Leipzig, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, NHK Symphony Orchestra, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Munich Philharmonic, Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Staatskapelle Dresden, Cleveland Orchestra, symphony orchestras from Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic Debut Rotterdam Philharmonic: 1990

Photo: Timo Mokkila

Opera Houses: Finnish National Opera, State Theater Nuremberg, Opera Leipzig Opera Roles: Count Almaviva in Le Nozze di Figaro, Germont in La traviata, Chorèbe in Les Troyens, Rodrigo in Don Carlo, Wotan in Der Ring des Nibelungen, title role in Don Giovanni Debut Rotterdam Philharmonic: 2021 Photo: Heikki Saukkomaa

AGENDA Fri 3 December 2021 • 20.15 conductor Lahav Shani piano Yuja Wang Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2 Berlioz Symphonie fantastique Wed 1 December 2021 • 14.00 and 16.00 Sint Sing-Along (3+) members of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra together with Hofplein Rotterdam Sinterklaas songs Fri 17 December 2021 • 19.30 Sat 18 December 2021 • 19.30 Sun 19 December 2021 • 13.30 conductor Jonathan Cohen soprano Emöke Baráth counter tenor Andreas Scholl tenor Andrew Staples baritone Matthew Rose choir Groot Omroepkoor Handel Messiah Wed 29 December 2021 • 13.15 and 15.00 Thu 30 December 2021 • 13.15 and 15.00 The Nutcracker (4+) conductor Adam Hickox actors Eric Jan Lens, Christiaan Koetsier and Sanne Franssen scenography Kathelijne Monnens and Cynthia Borst staging Fons Merkies Tchaikovsky The Nutcracker (selection) Fri 7 January 2022 • 20.15 Sun January 2022 • 14.15 New Year Concert: Musical Meets Opera conductor Dirk Brossé vocal soloists Katrien Baerts, Alice Fearn and Jonathan Andrew Hume Highlights from the musical and opera repertoire

MUSICIANS Conductor Lahav Shani Honorary Conductor Valery Gergiev Yannick Nézet-Séguin First violin Igor Gruppman, concertmaster Marieke Blankestijn, concertmaster Quirine Scheffers Hed Yaron Meyerson Saskia Otto Arno Bons Mireille van der Wart Shelly Greenberg Cor van der Linden Rachel Browne Maria Dingjan Marie-José Schrijner Noëmi Bodden Petra Visser Sophia Torrenga Hadewijch Hofland Annerien Stuker Alexandra van Beveren Koen Stapert Second violin Charlotte Potgieter Cecilia Ziano Frank de Groot Laurens van Vliet Tomoko Hara Elina Staphorsius Jun Yi Dou Bob Bruyn Letizia Sciarone Eefje Habraken Maija Reinikainen Sumire Hara Wim Ruitenbeek Babette van den Berg Melanie Broers

Viola Anne Huser Roman Spitzer Maartje van Rheeden Galahad Samson Kerstin Bonk Lex Prummel Janine Baller Francis Saunders Veronika Lénártová Rosalinde Kluck León van den Berg Cello Emanuele Silvestri Joanna Pachucka Daniel Petrovitsch Mario Rio Gé van Leeuwen Eelco Beinema Carla Schrijner Pepijn Meeuws Yi-Ting Fang Double bass Matthew Midgley Ying Lai Green Jonathan Focquaert Robert Franenberg Harke Wiersma Arjen Leendertz Ricardo Neto Flute Juliette Hurel Joséphine Olech Désirée Woudenberg Oboe Remco de Vries Karel Schoofs Hans Cartigny Anja van der Maten Oboe/cor anglais Ron Tijhuis Clarinet Julien Hervé Bruno Bonansea Jan Jansen

Clarinet/ bass clarinet Romke-Jan Wijmenga Bassoon Pieter Nuytten Marianne Prommel Bassoon/ contra bassoon Hans Wisse Horn David Fernández Alonso Wendy Leliveld Richard Speetjens Laurens Otto Pierre Buizer Trumpet Giuliano Sommerhalder Alex Elia Simon Wierenga Jos Verspagen Trombone Pierre Volders Alexander Verbeek Remko de Jager Bass Trombone/ contrabass trombone Ben van Dijk Tuba Hendrik-Jan Renes Timpani/percussion Randy Max Danny van de Wal Ronald Ent Martijn Boom Adriaan Feyaerts Harp Charlotte Sprenkels