Oulu Sinfonia’s spring season 2024 kicks off in February under the baton of Chief Conductor Rumon Gamba. The themes for the month are stories and exoticism, evident in the opening concert From the New World on Thursday, February 8th, featuring Antonín Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9. The Czech master’s composition, known as “From the New World”, was written during his visit to New York and is filled with echoes of American music that captivated Dvořák during his time there.
The concert also includes a world premiere of a Finnish piece, Sampo Kasurinen’s viola concerto. The concerto, a joint commission between Oulu Sinfonia and Sinfonia Lahti, is influenced by Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson’s exhibition Epic Waste of Love and Understanding, which Kasurinen encountered at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark. The concerto features the renowned Finnish violist, Oulu-born Lilli Maijala, as the soloist.
“The concerto is tailored largely for Maijala,” Kasurinen says and adds: “In the beginning of the first movement, I wanted to paint a picture of the ‘journey to the pedestal,’ depicting everything one must go through to ascend the podium. I am fascinated by the contrast between the often beautiful end result that the audience hears, and the world behind this curtain.”
The opening piece of the concert is the rarely heard Introduction and Allegro by the English composer Edward Elgar.
One of the highlights of the winter occurs on February 14th and 15th. Oulu Sinfonia’s concert Seasons 2.0 features Max Richter’s version of Antonio Vivaldi’s famous series of violin concertos, and the Finnish premiere of Lauri Porra’s Seasons in Moominvalley, premiered in Iceland at the end of 2023.
Richter, known for his compositions for films like Ad Astra and Waltz with Bashir, pays tribute to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, adding subtle hints of 21st-century styles such as minimalism and ambient without losing the beauty of the original music. Violinist Antti Tikkanen serves as the soloist and leader for the concert.
In Lauri Porra’s work, Seasons in Moominvalley, the audience experiences the seasons of Moominvalley through both sight and sound. The animated images projected onto the screen are created by the award-winning animator and children’s book illustrator Carlos da Cruz, known for his humorous details. Actress Alma Pöysti leads to the story.
During the Early Music Week, Oulu Sinfonia takes baroque classics to Oulu Cathedral. In the Water Music concert on February 22nd, the audience is transported to the 18th century and the splendor of the Baroque era, led by world-renowned baroque expert Nicholas McGegan. The program includes Antonio Vivaldi’s concerto, with Oulu Sinfonia’s concertmaster Mikko Sorri as the soloist, and Jean-Philippe Rameau’s orchestral suite from the opera Naïs. The highlight of the concert is Georg Friedrich Handel’s Water Music, composed over 300 years ago to accompany the sailing trips of King George I on the river Thames. It remains one of the most beloved pieces in classical music.
On Leap Day (February 29th), in the One Thousand and One Nights concert, Mihhail Gerts conducts Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s tone poem Scheherazade, capturing the atmosphere of the tales of One Thousand and One Nights in mystical Arabia. The guest soloist is the Polish pianist Piotr Pawlak, winner of the 2022 International Maj Lind Piano Competition, who will perform Sergei Rachmaninoff’s iconic Third Piano Concerto.”
Text: Oulu Sinfonia
Photo: Lilli Maijala, c Eduardus Lee