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Friday 31 May 2013

Music, University, and Fredrik Pacius

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The Pacius Award which i was given last week prompted me to think about the history of music making in the University of Helsinki, and in universities in general. I think it is quite remarkable that still during these cynical times where everything is measured in profitability and efficiency, we still manage to have liberal arts present in the university curricula.

Inclusion of music in the university studies goes all the way back to Plato's Republic (written in 380BC), which served as an educational model for the first universities in Europe in the 12th century. The universities in medieval Europe were divided into four faculties - Arts, Theology, Medicine, and Law, but before studying any other discipline the student first had to become a Master of Arts. The curriculum consisted of the Seven Liberal Arts which were divided into Trivium (grammar, logic, rhetoric) and Quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy). That means that until recent times practically every educated person had also studied music!

Finland's first university was founded in 1640 in Turku, and it also had a faculty of Arts, even though in Finland it was called the faculty of Philosophy (and later, Humanities). Its first music director, Carl Petter Lenning (1711-1788), was appointed in 1747, and this was the position Fredrik Pacius (1809-1891) later applied for, when the university had been transferred to the new capital, Helsinki, after Finland had been annexed by the Russian Empire.

Fredrik Paciuksen muotokuva, Helsingin yliopiston kokoelmat

Pacius was born in Hamburg and had studied violin with Louis Spohr (1784-1859) before securing a job in the Royal Court Orchestra in Stockholm. In 1835 he became the music director of the University of Helsinki, and that started a new era in Finnish music. He composed the first Finnish opera, The Hunt of King Charles, as well as another Singspiel, The Princess of Cyprus (wouldn't it be fascinating to actually perform this piece on Cyprus!). He also composed the song, Maamme (Vårt Land) which later became the Finnish National Anthem. Because of this and other achievements he earned himself the nickname "Father of Finnish Music".

After Pacius many other important figures in Finnish musical life have served as the music director of Helsinki University, notably the conductor Robert Kajanus and composer Leevi Madetoja. Their job was to organize the musical life of the university, compose and conduct according to the need.

These days this job does not exist anymore, but Musicology has been taught at the university since 1900, and there is also an active Helsinki University Music Society (HYMS) which could be seen as the heir of the now extinct music director position. As part of keeping alive the tradition of academic music making they present the annual Pacius Award for "considerable efforts to advance the musical life of the University." For me it was a great honor to be named the recipient of the award this year. Thank you, alma mater!

Saturday 25 May 2013

My First Music Director Season

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The concert season 2012-13 has ended and now it is time to have a little break before the summer festivals start! This was a very good season for me all in all, and I was for the first time in my life in charge of my own orchestra, St. Michel Strings which was besides great fun also a great responsibility and a great learning opportunity as well. Me and my orchestra have definitely come closer to a common sound ideal, since concert by concert I have been happier and happier about the result.

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Our subscription season ended last week with a joint concert with the Fantasia wind quintet. This quintet has been around for ten years already, and they have just published their first recording. All the players were familiar to me from my cellist times at the Helsinki Conservatory, so I knew that we will be a good match. We played together some Honegger, Kokkonen and Linde, and this was a good way for us to prepare for our forthcoming trip to Korea and the Great Mountains Music Festival in July.

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Rehearsing Wagner at the Helsinki University Great Hall.

The aforementioned concert was not our last performance this spring, since we were also invited to perform at the Helsinki University to celebrate the 200th birthday of Richard Wagner. We finished the occasion with the Prelude to Tristan and Siegfried Idyll, after which the whole orchestra enjoyed an evening at the Finnish National Opera just for relaxation. My heart was especially warmed by the fact that my old alma mater Helsinki University wanted to present me with the Pacius Award in the same occasion.

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Looking back at this season and the concerts I both conducted and attended as a listener in Mikkeli, I must say I am very happy with all the work we have done together. The word has really gone around and now people around Finland and, yes, around the world know that there is a great string orchestra hidden in the beautiful Mikaeli concert center in eastern Finland. We have already received several invitations to perform abroad and hopefully we can fulfill some of them next season. The challenge remains nevertheless, how to find the support of our local patrons and the city politicians. This means a lot of hard work next season. Classical music, and orchestral music, are things worth fighting for!

Sunday 19 May 2013

For the Love of Bach

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Johann Sebastian Bach is one of my favorite composers, and his music has held a special meaning to me since childhood. My mother being a flute teacher I of course heard a lot of classical music at home, and besides Bach I remember being fond of symphonies of Mozart and Sibelius already early on. But what makes Bach especially dear to me is the fact that I used to perform several of his cantatas as a boy soprano/alto at the local Lutheran church which used to have a very active concert life those days.

You might be able to imagine the shock a little Suzuki cellist (who always played by ear) went through when he was first time given his vocal score of BWV 78 "Alles nur nach Gottes Willen" with a strange clef and all those intimidating sixteenth notes. In fact I had to practice it so much that I can sing my part even today! It is no exaggeration that I can thank Bach and his cantatas for my sight singing abilities. During those years Bach kind of went to my blood even though I did not yet have any kind of ambition to become a musician myself.

Later on, when I already was studying cello more seriously, I had my second important encounter with my "old friend J.S." After reading some writings about baroque music by Nikolaus Harnoncourt I went and bought my first ever classical recording, which was all six Brandenburg Concertos by Bach. I locked myself in a room to listen to the album from beginning to end, and during the final movement of the fifth concerto I remember being so touched by the genius of this music that to this day it is the closest I have ever come to a spiritual experience. I was hooked, addicted to this music from that day on.

Knowing all of the above, you then probably understand why I was really excited when a couple of weeks ago I got a chance to conduct an all Bach program in the same church where I used to sing as a boy! In the program we performed Bach's Violin Concerto in A minor, the organist of the church played the famous Toccata and Fugue in D minor, and then I led a performance of the "Lutheran" Mass in G minor with the chorus formed of the Cantors of this and the neighboring parishes. Coincidentally, the Gloria of this mass has exactly the same music as the opening of the cantata BWV 78, completing the sense of musical homecoming for me.

The orchestra, Castor & Pollux, was familiar to me from one earlier concert, and most of the players I know from the times I used to be the last desk cello in the Kerava music school orchestra. It is great to see adult amateurs keep up their playing ability and come together year after year to play great music! Also the violin soloist, Johanna Ellenberg, used to study at the Helsinki Conservatory at the same time with me. Our concert was so well received by a church full of Bach lovers, that we decided to repeat the same program next year in both of the neighboring parishes.

While I am waiting for that happy occasion I am already planning the rest of the season 2013-14, and believe it or not, it will be my tenth season conducting professional orchestras! To honor it I have decided that one of my projects (there will be many others too) is to perform all of the magical Brandenburg concertos. When I launch my season with St. Michel Strings and Saimaa Sinfonietta in September it will open with the 2nd Brandenburg concerto, and the last concert of fall 2013 with St. Michel Strings will take off with the 3rd Brandenburg concerto. The rest of them I am still looking spots for. Send me a note if you have any ideas!

Thursday 9 May 2013

"See all my critics wastin' time"

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A month ago I conducted a concert in Joensuu, eastern Finland, and that program was no doubt the most difficult for me this season. We of course played some timeless classics there, like Idomeneo overture by Mozart and Beethoven's 2nd symphony, but the hardest piece was Tapio Tuomela's "'Swap' for saxophone and orchestra", which was a world premiere. Our excellent soloist was Joonatan Rautiola who also played the lovely Ibert Concertino.

Why I thought about this today (and hence the headline) is because I just received a tape of the concert and had the first chance to listen to it right now. What I hear is excellent music making by the Joensuu City Orchestra but that was not what the local music critic had heard on the concert day. He described the playing as "tired", "forced" and "going through the motions". His description about the concert seemed to go systematically against what actually happened, as far as to say his favorite part was the Ibert - which was the piece we almost left without rehearsal because the world premiere piece took so much of our time.

I am no longer surprised by this kind of "reviews" since it has happened to me before. Five years ago I had a concert with my current orchestra (then as a guest conductor), a joint project with the Lappeenranta City Orchestra under the name Saimaa Sinfonietta. The critic of the Lappeenranta paper trashed me, the performance and the whole idea of joint orchestra projects. I felt devastated until I watched the video I had myself recorded of the performance. Honestly, I felt it was the best performance I had led to the date. I showed it to my conducting professor Leif Segerstam, and he eagerly agreed. I showed it to some musicians who play in the orchestras of the capital, Helsinki, and their reaction was - "we did not know our provincial orchestras can play this good". That video proved very useful later when I had to send some application DVD:s and I still like to include some moments from that performance when people ask to see samples of my conducting.

I actually like to read reviews and I think they are very important to orchestras as an indicator of how well they are doing and also what kind of cultural climate they are living in. Critics never write just about the music they hear, but their view is colored by many factors, including local cultural politics or even orchestra politics. It took me some time to understand this side to the music criticism, but still, I would like to read critics that are informed and based on the actual quality of playing rather than some vague expectations.

That said, even a bad review is better than no review at all. I feel like in Finland at the moment the press is becoming less and less interested in reviewing cultural events, and the space they give for the occasional review is getting smaller and smaller so that the writer is forced to limit his description to the absolute minimum. That has led to some pretty cryptic reviews even in the main newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat.

To lighten the mood I'll finish with a quote from Sir Thomas Beecham. As a disclaimer I must say that I don't fully share his opinion on the matter!

"Members of the Delius Trust were once discussing the setting up of a university professorship of music. Someone suggested a chair of musical criticism. Sir Thomas observed: 'If there is to be a chair for critics, I think it had better be an electric chair.'"

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Thursday 25 April 2013

French Music in Kazakhstan

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Shalkyma concert hall in Karaganda

My most exotic concert trip so far this year was to Karaganda, Kazakhstan. It came about at a short notice when one of my old conducting teachers, Piotr Gribanov, contacted me just a few weeks before the concert date and promised that I can plan any kind of a program I want. I settled for a French program, since I had performed some of this music in my other programs this season as well - Ravel Pavane, Saint-Saëns Violin Concerto No.3 and Bizet Symphony in C Major.

Going to Kazakhstan - a former Soviet state - was for me like a trip to my past, when I was still a student at the St. Petersburg Conservatory and used to guest conduct some Russian orchestras. Kazakhstan has two official languages and one of them is Russian, which made me quite comfortable moving around town and dealing with the local people. The city is built in a typical Soviet style with street names dedicated to Lenin or Gorki, for example. I also found very typical Russian dishes in the cafés and restaurants (however, I did not taste the local culinary delight, horse meat).

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My concert announcement on the "lyre" outside the hall

I had great time working with the Karaganda Symphony Orchestra and enjoying the nostalgic feeling in the city. My violin soloist for the concert was Diyar Kazenov, a young violinist from the capital, Astana, a pleasure to work with. I also met the second conductor of the orchestra, Anton Torbeev - a very promising young artist from Russia who helped me a lot during the week. One day I also listened to the rehearsal of the folk instrument ensemble. I was very excited to see that the most ancient Kazakh folk instrument, "kobys", is very similar to the Finnish "jouhikko"!

Our concert proved to be a big celebration for the local music lovers. The hall was packed and the crowd was cheering already when the first musicians walked onstage. For us musicians it makes a difference when we feel welcomed and appreciated by the audience, and I must say the Karaganda audience has been the most enthusiastic I've seen so far in my concerts. I was also happy to see some people from the Finnish Embassy, who came to my concert all the way from the capital!

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Rehearsal of the Folk Instrument Orchestra

After the concert I was sad to say goodbye to so many new friends I made in Kazakhstan. I am pretty sure I will be back sooner than later to work again with the Kazakhstani musicians. For those Russian speakers, here is a review published in the local newspaper, "Industrial Karaganda".

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