13 FEBRUARY
WEDNESDAY SERIES 9
Helsinki Music Centre at 7 pm
Marc Minkowski, conductor
W. A. Mozart: Symphony No. 25 in G Minor KV 183
29 min
I Allegro con brio
II Andante
III Minuet – Trio
IV Allegro
INTERVAL 20 min
Hans Rott: Symphony in E Major
60 min
I Alla breve
II Adagio (Very slow)
III Scherzo (Fresh and vivid)
IV Sehr langsam – Belebt (Very slow/ Brisk)
Interval at about 19.35. The concert ends at about 21.10.
Broadcast live on Yle Radio 1.
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tic shades. The second theme offers
no temporary lull, being more active
in character than is usual. As in many
works by Mozart in a minor key, the recapitulation acquires even deeper hues
when the second theme, originally in
the major, reappears in the minor.
The soft slow movement is, initially,
quite a contrast to the frenzied first,
but its gentle mood later takes a more
melancholy and even subdued turn.
The Minuet is, for a dance movement,
gloomy and stern, though the Trio section, scored for winds only, does have
some brighter, idyllic touches. The
Allegro finale begins with a creeping
unison motif in the strings. When it returns, forte, the syncopations and frenzied tone of the first movement return,
as do the chromatic shades and the
kindred melodic motifs.
WOLFGANG AMADEUS
MOZART (1756–1791):
SYMPHONY NO. 25 IN
G MINOR KV 183
A mighty whirlwind swept over the music of Central Europe in the late 1760s
and early 1770s. In its path were such
composers as Joseph Haydn, Johann
Baptist Vanhal and Karl von Ordóñez,
writing symphonies unconventional
in expression and plunging deep into
minor keys. It was a movement later
known as “Sturm und Drang” (literally “Storm and Stress”) – a term borrowed from a play (1776) by Friedrich
Maximilian Klinger. Mozart, too, got
fleetingly caught up in the musical
Sturm und Drang, admittedly with only
one work but one all the more impressive at that: the Symphony No. 25 in
G Minor he completed in October 1773.
The early or “little” G Minor Symphony
is brimming with feverish gestures typical of the musical Sturm und Drang.
Just before starting the symphony,
Mozart had been in Vienna and may
have heard works by Haydn and Vanhal.
The symphonies in G minor by Haydn
(no. 39) and Vanhal may have served
as models, for they share not only the
same key and a similar tone but also
the use of four horns instead of the
normal two.
The opening movement represents
the Sturm und Drang in a nutshell: furious syncopated rhythms, melodic outbursts, drops of a diminished seventh,
blazing tremolos, lamenting oboe lines,
sudden dynamic shifts and chroma-
HANS ROTT
(1858–1884):
SYMPHONY IN E MAJOR
The brief life of Hans Rott is a sad
chapter in the history of great “might
have beens”. Why is it so sad? Because
he was truly talented and greatly respected by both his teacher Anton
Bruckner and his friend Gustav Mahler.
The most convincing proof of his talent
is his main work, the Symphony in E
Major composed in 1878–1880.
Rott’s is a supreme representative of the late Romantic symphony, a
blend of traits borrowed from Bruckner,
Wagner, Brahms and others. Its most
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down, the movement builds up to the
symphony’s greatest climax before subsiding in a Wagnerian mist of sound.
exciting feature is nevertheless the way
it looks ahead to the symphonic style of Mahler, who knew the work and
admitted it had given him some ideas. He saw in Rott “the founder of the
new symphony”, and “he and I seem to
me like two fruits from the same tree
which the same soil has produced and
the same air nourished.”
Though Rott’s symphony does observe the traditional four-movement format, both the individual movements
and the overall structure display some
original features. The opening movement is, contrary to tradition, the shortest. At the end of the slow movement,
with its broad, flowing melodic spans,
Rott suddenly introduces a new chorale-like theme, not in the movement’s
main key, A major, but in E major. The
third movement is a Scherzo of shifting, ambiguous moods, signal-like motifs and Ländler allusions that at times
sound startlingly Mahlerian. After the
Trio section Rott once again expands
the movement with new material before returning to the Scherzo theme
proper.
The weightiest movement is the finale, recalling the opening motif of the
first movement and the chorale-like
theme of the second. The wind writing of the slow first section is again
strongly evocative of Mahler, but the
more mobile middle section bursts
out into a hymn-like melody that calls
to mind the finale theme of Brahms’s
first symphony – which was in turn
a deliberate allusion to Beethoven’s
“Ode to Joy”. The tempo having slowed
Kimmo Korhonen (abridged)
MARC MINKOWSKI
Initially a bassoonist, Marc Minkowski
began conducting at an early age, notably under the guidance of Charles
Bruck at the Pierre Monteux Memorial
School in the United States. At the age
of 19 he founded the famous Musiciens
du Louvre.
A conductor who actively tours in
Europe, Minkowski has been Music
Director of the Sinfonia Varsovia since
2008 and is a regular guest of symphony orchestras in repertoire increasingly focusing on 20th-century composers. He is often invited to Germany
(the Dresden Staatskapelle, Berlin
Philharmonic, DSO Berlin) and he also
conducts the Vienna Symphony, the
Mozarteum Orchestra in Salzburg,
the Cleveland Orchestra, the Mahler
Chamber Orchestra, the Swedish Radio
Orchestra, the Orchestra National du
Capitole de Toulouse, the Mariinsky
Theatre Orchestra and the Qatar
Philharmonic.
Marc Minkowski has been appointed
Artistic Director of the Salzburg Mozart
Week, which he will programme from
the 2013 edition onwards. In June 2011
he inaugurated Ré Majeure, the festival he founded on the Île de Ré off the
French Atlantic coast.
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THE FINNISH RADIO
SYMPHONY
ORCHESTRA
Lindberg Violin Concertos (Sony BMG)
with Lisa Batiashvili as the soloist received the MIDEM Classical Award
in 2008, in which year the New York
Times chose the other Lindberg disc as
its Record of the Year.
The FRSO regularly tours to all parts
of the world. During the 2012/2013
season it will be heading for Eastern
Finland and Southern Europe.
All the FRSO concerts both in Finland
and abroad are broadcast, usually live,
on yle Radio 1. They can also be heard
and watched with excellent live stream
quality on the FRSO website (yle.fi/rso).
The Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra
(FRSO) is the orchestra of the Finnish
Broadcasting Company (yle). Its mission is to produce and promote Finnish
musical culture. Its Chief Conductor as
of autumn 2013 will be Hannu Lintu,
following a season (2012/2013) as the
orchestra’s Principal Guest Conductor.
The
FRSO
has
two
Honorary
Conductors: Jukka-Pekka Saraste and
Sakari Oramo.
The Radio Orchestra of ten players
founded in 1927 grew to symphony orchestra strength in the 1960s. Its previous Chief Conductors have been
Toivo Haapanen, Nils-Eric Fougstedt,
Paavo Berglund, Okko Kamu, Leif
Segerstam, Jukka-Pekka Saraste and
Sakari Oramo.
The latest contemporary music is
a major item in the repertoire of the
FRSO, which each year premieres a
number of yle commissions. Another
of the orchestra’s tasks is to record all
Finnish orchestral music for the yle archive. During the 2012/2013 season it
will premiere six works commissioned
by yle.
The FRSO has recorded works by
Eötvös, Nielsen, Hakola, Lindberg,
Saariaho, Sallinen, Kaipainen, Kokkonen
and others, and the debut disc of the
opera Aslak Hetta by Armas Launis. Its
discs have reaped some major distinctions, such as the BBC Music Magazine
Award and the Académie Charles Cros
Award. The disc of the Sibelius and
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