Cello Concerto
Esa-Pekka Salonen
E
sa-Pekka Salonen is widely acknowledged for his work on the podium, having served as principal conductor of the
Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra from
1984 to 1995, music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic from 1992 to 2009 (he now
holds the title of conductor laureate), and
principal conductor and artistic advisor of
the Philharmonia Orchestra in London since
2006. But even as his very public conducting
career skyrocketed, he remained active as a
composer. This is the second season of his
three-year tenure as The Marie-Josée Kravis
Composer-in-Residence at the New York
Philharmonic. This year he begins a five-year
affiliation as artist in association at the
Finnish National Opera and Ballet, as well as
his 14th season as artistic director of the annual Baltic Sea Festival, which he co-founded
to promote unity and ecological awareness
among the countries of that region.
Salonen has been an active composer since
the beginning of his career. He studied horn,
conducting, and composition at the Sibelius
Academy in Helsinki during the 1970s — his
composition teacher was the late Einojuhani
Rautavaara — and sought further composition study in Italy with Niccolò Castiglioni
and Franco Donatoni. If asked to define his
professional self at the time, he would have
replied that he was “a conducting composer.”
That changed in 1983 when, at short notice,
Salonen substituted for a performance of
Mahler’s Third Symphony with the Philharmonia Orchestra in London, an event that
moved him into the major league at the
podium and instantly transformed him into
“a composing conductor.” He cited the need
to find time to compose as a central factor in
his decision to step down from directing the
Los Angeles Philharmonic.
Major retrospectives of his work have been
presented at the Festival Présences in Paris
(2011), Stockholm International Composer
Festival (2004), and Musica Nova in Helsinki
(2003), and he was the first person named to
the creative chair of the Tonhalle Orchestra
Zurich. He has received prominent honors by
the governments of Sweden, France, and Finland, as well as the 2014 Nemmers Composition Prize. In 2006 he was named Musician of
the Year by Musical America, and in 2010 he
was elected a foreign honorary fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His
Violin Concerto (2008–09) earned the 2012
Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition.
Salonen’s orchestral works are remarkable
for their detailed instrumental writing and tex-
IN SHORT
Born: June 30, 1958, in Helsinki, Finland
Resides: in London, England
Work composed: 2015–17 (completed
January 30, 2017) on commission from the
Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Riccardo
Muti, Music Director; New York Philharmonic,
Alan Gilbert, Music Director; Barbican Centre,
London; and Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg, for
Yo-Yo Ma. The co-commission by the Chicago
Symphony Orchestra is generously supported
by the Mrs. Harold C. Smith Fund for New
Music; the New York Philharmonic’s cocommission is with generous support from
the New York Philharmonic’s The Marie-Josée
Kravis Composer-in-Residence Fund.
World premiere: March 9, 2017, in Chicago,
with the composer conducting the Chicago
Symphony Orchestra, Yo-Yo Ma, soloist
New York Philharmonic premiere: these
performances
Estimated duration: ca. 25 minutes
MARCH 2017 | 29
In the Composer’s Words
Some of the ideas for my Cello Concerto can be traced back by at least three decades, but the
actual material for the piece was mostly developed in the summer of 2015, when I decided to
spend a few months researching for new kinds of textures without a concrete plan of how to use
them. I decided to use some phrases from my 2010 solo cello work, ...knock, breathe, shine…, in
the second and third movements as I always felt that the music of the solo piece was almost orchestral in its scope and character, and would function well within an orchestral environment.
It has been a very great pleasure and honor to write a concerto for one of the most unique lifegivers and communicators of our time, Yo-Yo Ma. It has been inspiring to know that his technique
knows no limits. Perhaps more importantly: nor does his imagination.
The first movement opens with what in my sketchbook had the title “Chaos to line.” Chaos here
must be understood metaphorically, as a stylized version of the idea. I like the concept of a simple thought emerging out of a complex landscape. Almost like consciousness developing from
clouds of dust.
This leads to the second semi-cosmological metaphor: a comet. I imagined the solo cello line as
a trajectory of a moving object in space being followed and emulated by other lines / instruments /
moving objects. A bit like a comet’s tail. In musical terms it could be described as a canon, but not
quite, as the imitation is not always literal or precise. The gestus remains, however, almost identical every time. Sometimes the imitating cloud flies above the cello, sometimes in the very same register. It thins out to two lines and finally to one. There are faster, more playful episodes alternating
with the cloud, and finally the movement gains enough speed for the balance to tilt toward fast
music. At the end a variation of the cloud returns.
The second movement is very simple in form, more complex in texture. It starts with a wedgeformed cloud (>) and ends with another (<), if one can imagine such a thing. The slow cello arches
are looped to create harmony from single lines. Sometimes the loops are dispersed in space. The
middle section is a playful duet between the solo cello and the alto flute.
The third movement starts with a slow, brooding cello solo under the residue of the second wedgecloud. The expression quickly becomes more extroverted through a series of accelerandi. A rhythmic mantra starts to develop in the congas and bongos. It will appear often later in the course of
the movement, mostly in the timpani. This music is often dance-like; sometimes gesticulating wildly,
perhaps from the sheer joy of no longer having anything to do with clouds and processes. An acrobatic solo episode leads to a fast tutti section where I imagined the orchestra as some kind of gigantic lung, expanding and contracting first slowly, but accelerating to a point of mild
hyperventilation which leads back
to the dance-like material.
Quixotic solo cello episodes lead
to a joyful coda based on the
“lung” music, but now with a solo
cello line. Finally, the kinetic energy burns itself out gently, the
rapid movement slows down, and
the cello line climbs slowly up to a
stratospherically high B-flat, two
centimetres to the left from the
highest note of the piano.
— Esa-Pekka Salonen
30 | NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC
For Friends
Like Esa-Pekka Salonen’s two other recent concertos, for violin (written for Leila Josefowicz)
and piano (written for Yefim Bronfman), his
new Cello Concerto was written for a longtime
friend and colleague, Yo-Yo Ma. Of composing
with specific artists in mind, Salonen says:
There are two sides to it. The obvious, simple
answer, is, of course, it’s fun to work with
friends. It gives me a lot of pleasure to develop a partnership and friendship, which
has been there for decades in some cases,
on to the next level … There’s something
about the aura of that person that becomes
part of the energy of the piece. When I’m
writing for you, I have your sound in mind. …
It’s also the personality thing. It’s not only
the way a person plays an instrument, it’s
the way the person is, and how I’ve elected
to represent that personality.
Following these performances, Yo-Yo Ma will
perform the concerto with Alan Gilbert and the
New York Philharmonic, on the EUROPE /
SPRING 2017 tour at the Barbican Centre in
London and Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg.
— The Editors
ture (the mark of a conducting composer),
while his personal voice sometimes reflects
particular influences from such forebears as
Stravinsky, Messiaen, and Donatoni. The Cello
Concerto heard here is his fourth entry in that
genre, being preceded by concertos for violin
(2009, written for Leila Josefowicz), piano
(2007, co-commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, which presented its premiere with
Yefim Bronfman), and an early concerto for
alto saxophone (1980). Salonen writes:
I have never — not even during the quite dogmatic and rigid modernist days of my youth
— felt that the very idea of writing a solo concerto would in itself be burdened with some
kind of dusty bourgeois tradition. A concerto
is simply an orchestral work where one or
several instruments have a more prominent
role than the others. A concerto does not suggest a formal design the same way a symphony does. I also happen to like the concept
of a virtuoso operating at the very limits of
what is physically (and sometimes mentally)
possible. In Nietzsche’s words: “You have
made danger your vocation; there is nothing
contemptible in that.” I have learnt, however,
that virtuosity doesn’t limit itself to the mechanics of playing an instrument. A true virtuoso can also capture the beauty and
expression in the quietest moments, to fill
near-stasis with life through a musician’s
imagination and ability to communicate. In
my other life as a performer, I witness that almost every day: how musicians can create
meaning from a single note. The composerme is humbled by it, but also deeply grateful.
After all, all those symbols on paper mean
nothing until somebody gives them life.
Instrumentation: two flutes (doubling alto
flute) and piccolo, two oboes and English
horn, two clarinets, and bass clarinet and
contrabass clarinet, two bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets, two
trombones, timpani, crotales, marimba, vibraphone, orchestra bells, tuned gongs,
maracas, cabasa, claves, two bongos, four
congas, harp, piano (doubling celeste), and
strings, in addition to the solo cello.
Sound design by Ella Wahlström
MARCH 2017 | 30A