Shostakovich according to Mäkelä
Rautavaara’s cello concerto, Towards the Horizon, is reminiscent of pompous Hollywood music that has taken a step towards the harsher, more modern art music, a split that is skilfully navigated by the cellist who plays almost continuously throughout the piece. Anton Webern arranged Bach’s brilliant Ricercar à 6 for orchestra to make the music more accessible and comprehensible, two qualities that Shostakovich probably bore in mind when he wrote his Symphony No. 5 as a reaction against political oppression and smearing. And, sure enough, it was a huge success – the symphony remains one of his most popular to this day.
In the autumn of 2017, the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra crossed paths with conductor Klaus Mäkelä for the first time, an encounter that was so successful that, in December that same year, he was announced as the orchestra’s first guest conductor, with a three-year contract. This season, on location in Berwaldhallen, Mäkelä will conduct three symphonies by Shostakovich: the fifth, sixth and seventh.
The young conductor is absolutely inundated with requests. He is Artist in Association at the Tapiola Sinfonietta and in 2017, he also debuted as opera conductor at the Finnish National Opera. Mäkelä has also been appointed Esa-Pekka Salonen’s assistant for the work on the National Opera’s production of Der Ring des Nibelungen. In addition, he has been selected as the new artistic director of the Turku Music Festival and will be planning the programme for the summer of 2019, which is the festival’s 60th anniversary. A record start for a conductor born in 1996.
Anton Webern studied music in Vienna and wrote his thesis on renaissance conductor Heinrich Isaac. Later, Webern was intrigued by Arnold Schoenberg and his twelve-tone technique. To earn a livelihood, Webern conducted, composed and taught, as well as working at the Universal Edition publishing house. In a letter to conductor Hermann Scherchen, Webern wrote about his adaptation of Bach’s Ricercar: ”My instrumentation aims to reveal the motivic coherence… What music it is! Truly, it is not worthwhile to awaken this music, which lies asleep in the seclusion of Bach’s own abstract presentation…”
Einojuhani Rautavaara wrote his Cello Concerto No. 2, dedicating it to Truls Mørk. The concerto is quite short, around 20 minutes, and written in a movement that is divided into three parts. The title, Towards the Horizon, is more a feeling than a programme commentary. Rautavaara himself has said that with this concerto he has composed twelve overall, and that this one may also be his final one. This neo-classical work presents the cello in a more or less unbroken melody that is varied against the orchestral movements. Towards the end of the concerto, the orchestra becomes more brutal but lets the cello end on a lyrical note, a figure rising towards the horizon.
Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5 from 1937 was to be a turning-point in his life. The year before, the state-owned newspaper Pravda published an article with the header, ”Chaos instead of music”. That was to be the start of a veritable witch-hunt for Shostakovich, who feared for his life. For that reason, he withdrew his already composed Fourth Symphony and instead, presented the Fifth with the comment, ”an artist’s response to just criticism”.
Text: Evabritt Selén
Participants
The Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra is a multiple-award-winning ensemble renowned for its high artistic standard and stylistic breadth, as well as collaborations with the world’s finest composers, conductors, and soloists. It regularly tours all over Europe and the world and has an extensive and acclaimed recording catalogue.
Daniel Harding has been Music Director of the SRSO since 2007, and since 2019 also its Artistic Director. His tenure will last throughout the 2024/2025 season. Two of the orchestra’s former chief conductors, Herbert Blomstedt and Esa-Pekka Salonen, have since been named Conductors Laureate, and continue to perform regularly with the orchestra.
The Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra performs at Berwaldhallen, concert hall of the Swedish Radio, and is a cornerstone of Swedish public service broadcasting. Its concerts are heard weekly on the Swedish classical radio P2 and regularly on national public television SVT. Several concerts are also streamed on-demand on Berwaldhallen Play and broadcast globally through the EBU.
Klaus Mäkelä is Chief Conductor and Artistic Advisor of the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra. With Orchestre de Paris he assumed the role of Music Director in September 2021 and has been the orchestra’s Artistic Advisor since the start of the 2020/21 season. He is also Principal Guest Conductor of the Swedish Radio Symphony and Artistic Director of the Turku Music Festival. An exclusive Decca Classics Artist, Klaus Mäkelä has recorded the complete Sibelius Symphony cycle with the Oslo Philharmonic as his first project for the label, to be released in 2022.
Klaus Mäkelä launched the Oslo Philharmonic 2021/22 season in August with a special concert featuring Saariaho’s Asteroid 4179: Toutatis, Strauss Also sprach Zarathustra, two new works by Norwegian composer Mette Henriette and Sibelius Lemminkäinen. A similarly wide range of repertoire is presented throughout his second season in Oslo, including major choral works by Bach, Mozart and William Walton, Mahler Symphony No. 3 and Shostakovich Symphonies Nos. 10 and 14 with soloists Mika Kares and Asmik Grigorian. Recent and new works include compositions by Sally Beamish, Unsuk Chin, Jimmy Lopez, Andrew Norman and Kaija Saariaho. In Spring 2022 Klaus Mäkelä and the Oslo Philharmonic will perform the complete Sibelius Symphony cycle at the Wiener Konzerthaus and Hamburg Elbphilharmonie and give additional concerts at the Paris Philharmonie and London Barbican.
With Orchestre de Paris, Klaus Mäkelä performed at the summer festivals of Granada and Aix en Provence. For his first concert in the 2021/ 22 season he conducted a new work by Unsuk Chin entitled Spira, Richard Strauss Four Songs Op 27 with soloist Lise Davidsen and Mahler Symphony No. 1. His first season as Music Director also features the music of Ligeti and Dutilleux alongside Biber, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Rachmaninov and Stravinsky.
In the 2021/22 season Klaus Mäkelä appears as a Portrait Artist at the Wiener Konzerthaus conducting the Wiener Symphoniker and Oslo Philharmonic and playing cello in chamber music. He also guest conducts the Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Concertgebouworkest, London Philharmonic, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks and Münchner Philharmoniker. In summer 2022 he returns to the Verbier Festival to conduct the Verbier Festival and Verbier Festival Chamber orchestras as well as perform as a chamber musician. He also makes his first appearance at the Jurmala Festival in Riga with the Mariss Jansons Festival Orchestra.
In the 2020/21 season Klaus Mäkelä appeared with the Concertgebouworkest, Münchner Philharmoniker, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, NDR Elbphilharmonie, Orchestra del Maggio Musicale, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra and Tapiola Sinfonietta. As Artist in Residence at Spain’s Granada Festival he conducted the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Orquesta Ciudad de Granada and Orchestre de Paris. At the Verbier Festival he conducted and performed cello in a chamber music programme.
Mäkelä studied conducting at the Sibelius Academy with Jorma Panula and cello with Marko Ylönen, Timo Hanhinen and Hannu Kiiski. As a soloist, he has performed with several Finnish orchestras and as a chamber musician with members of the Oslo Philharmonic, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks and Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France.
With a combination of artistic integrity, intensity and elegance, the cellist Truls Mørk has played his way to the very top as a soloist. He performs with the foremost orchestras around the world and has recently performed with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, Gewandhaus Orchester Leipzig, Orchestre de Paris and Tonhalle Orchester Zurich, to mention but a few. Mørk has recorded the great solo concerts of Dvořák and Elgar, as well as Britten and Shostakovich, and also the collective Cello Suites of both Bach and Britten. He has also begun touring with the pianist Behzod Abduraimov. Mørk is dedicated to contemporary music and has performed more than 30 works, such as Krzysztof Penderecki’s Concerto for Three Cellos, Hafliði Hallgrímsson’s Cello Concerto and Einojuhani Rautavaara’s Towards the Horizon.
Concert length: 2 h 10 min incl. intermission
More concerts
BEETHOVEN’S EIGHTH SYMPHONY
In his first concert with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Portuguese conductor Dinis Sousa plays powerful and poignant music by Joseph Haydn, Kaija Saariaho and Ludwig van Beethoven.
BACH’S MASS IN B MINOR
Music director Kaspars Putniņš conducts the Swedish Radio Choir and Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra in Johann Sebastian Bach’s great masterpiece.
MOZART IN THE HANDS OF MAXIM EMELYANYCHEV
Meet the SRSO’s principal guest conductor designate as both conductor and soloist in Mozart’s exuberant 23rd piano concerto and Rimsky-Korsakov’s thrilling Sheherazade.