Oulu Sinfonia’s October begins with The 20th Ostrobothnian Contemporary Music Festival concert, Wind in My Hair, on Thursday, 3rd October. The concert will feature some of the most intriguing orchestral works of our time. In Level 3, the final piece in Andrew Norman’s award-winning Play series, life resembles a side-scrolling platform game teetering on the edge of chaos. Ville Raasakka’s Harvest transforms the roar of forest machinery into musical sounds, while Aki Yli-Salomäki’s Uneen… floats with the lightness of dreamy clouds.
The solo piece in the concert is Wind in My Hair, a cello concerto by cult favourite Julia Wolfe. This will be the first performance of the piece in Finland. Wolfe, a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, brings a style that verges on the intensity of rock and electronic music, driving towards massive climaxes with an unstoppable force. Wind in My Hair is full of breath-taking soundscapes that wash over the listener. The soloist is Sirja Nironen, with James Scherlock conducting.
Former Chief Conductor Johannes Gustavsson returns to Oulu Sinfonia after almost three years. Oulu Sinfonia and the Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra will join forces for Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 5. With this symphony, Mahler returned to the world of instrumental symphonies after three vocal works. The music is more virtuosic, dramatic, and capricious than ever before. The colossal 75-minute work premiered in Cologne in 1904, but it rose to greater fame when director Luchino Visconti used its slow Adagietto movement in the soundtrack of his film Death in Venice (1971). The Mahler 5 concert will be performed on Thursday, 10th October at the Madetoja Hall in Oulu Music Centre, and on Friday, 11th October at the Snellman Hall in Kokkola.
Oulu Sinfonia will honour the memory of Kaj Chydenius, who passed away last spring, with sold-out Jos rakastat – Unohtumaton Kaj Chydenius concerts on 16th and 17th October. Chydenius, best known as a film and theatre composer and a leading figure in the political song movement, composed iconic songs such as Kalliolle kukkulalle, Jos rakastat, and Sinua, sinua rakastan. He was awarded several honours, including the Jussi Award, the State Prize for Arts, and the Pro Finlandia Medal.
The Oulu Sinfonia concerts will feature a selection of Chydenius’ most requested songs, performed by his son, Jussi Chydenius, also known from the vocal ensemble Rajaton, and actor-singer Oona Airola. A group of top musicians will join the symphony orchestra on stage, including another of the composer’s sons, Kalle Chydenius.
On Thursday, 31st October, the Don Juan concert will showcase orchestral music from the fringes of Romanticism. German early-Romantic composer Carl Maria von Weber’s most famous work is the opera Der Freischütz, whose overture remains a perennial favourite in symphonic concerts. Less commonly heard is Weber’s Bassoon Concerto, demonstrating that all woodwinds can have a dazzling soloistic agility. The soloist will be Oulu Sinfonia’s principal bassoonist Eri Ikeda, and Estonian guest conductor Olari Elts will take the podium.
Later Romanticism is represented by Pyotr Tchaikovsky and Richard Strauss, with their tone poems on the theme of love. Tchaikovsky’s overture-fantasy Romeo and Juliet, one of his most famous works, delves into the tragic twists of William Shakespeare’s play with music that turns fate, love, despair, and death into lush harmonies and memorable melodies. Strauss’s Don Juan, meanwhile, paints a portrait of the serial seducer who, after wooing a thousand women, meets his death in a duel.
Oulu Sinfonia Chamber Musicians will continue their series of free chamber concerts with the Crossing Borders concert on Friday, 18th October. Expect a journey full of cultural and musical encounters that will take listeners across continents. The concert will defy genre boundaries, blending influences from classical, jazz, and folk music. The Crossing Borders concert will take place in the Poiju Hall at Oulu University of Applied Sciences on Friday, 18th October, and will be repeated in the Tulindberg Hall at Oulu Music Centre on 27th November.