In addition to the season concerts, the UMO Helsinki Jazz Orchestra and Oulu Sinfonia will bring Burt Bacharach’s evergreens to Oulu, and Oulu Sinfonia’s Chamber Musicians will continue their autumn chamber music series.
November’s concert offering will fill Madetoja Hall with a wide variety of symphonic music. On Thursday 2 November, young Finnish musicians Senja Rummukainen and Otto Antikainen will create a rare atmosphere in the Brahms’ Final Works concert, featuring a concerto by the two soloists presented under the baton of Stefan Geiger from Germany. Johannes Brahms wrote his last orchestral work for cello and violin and for his closest friends. The concert will culminate in Brahms’ fourth and final symphony, a flamboyant mixture of dark tones.
On Thursday, 9 November, The concert Portrait of a Dictator will immerse you in the music of the Soviet rebels, led by Chief Conductor Rumon Gamba. While Sergei Prokofiev fled the Russian Revolution to the United States and took the world by storm with his streamlined third piano concerto, Dmitri Shostakovich was recruited as a humble but embittered servant of the machine. Although the surface of Shostakovich’s tenth symphony is dutifully polished, its most profound message is coloured by dark memories of the repressive years. Pianist Marianna Shirinyan, previously known to Oulu Sinfonia’s audience from live stream concert in January 2021, will arrive to take her place as the evening’s soloist.
Shostakovich’s music will also be heard on 16 November, when one of Finland’s most internationally renowned conductors, Professor Sakari Oramo, brings the students of his Uniarts Helsinki’s Academy Of Fine Arts / Sibelius Academy’s conducting class to Oulu. In addition to the Soviet composer’s fifth symphony, considered to be his most popular, the Rejoicing Under the Whip concert will feature Jean Sibelius’s early melodic poem “En saga” as well as a flute concerto by Danish national romantic Carl Nielsen. Highly talented young flautist, Sibelius Academy student Janette Leván will perform as the evening’s soloist.
The New World’s art of composition will be the theme on 23 November, when Taiwanese I-Han Fu, Uniarts Helsinki’s conducting class alumni, more commonly seen as a percussionist for the Oulu Sinfonia, will conduct an entire evening filled to the brim with American music. In the Melodies of Joy and Sorrow concert, you will hear, for example, Blue Cathedral by Jennifer Higdon, who won the Pulitzer Prize for music and is characterized as a neo-romantic, as well as Charles Ives’ philosophical and surreal The Unanswered Question. Ives is referred to as the father of American music. As a brilliant soloist, the orchestra’s own bass trombonist Wen Hong Low will take on jazz composer Christopher Brubeck’s Concerto for Bass Trombone. The programme will climax with Leonard Bernstein’s dance scenes from the musical West Side Story.
At the end of November and in connection with the Brahe Classica festival, Oulu Sinfonia and UMO Helsinki Jazz Orchestra will join forces and perform on Wednesday 29 November at 6 pm in Raahesali Concert Hall, as well as on Thursday 30 November at both 10 am (shorter daytime concert) and 7 pm (longer evening concert) in Madetoja Hall, Oulu. The Tribute to Burt Bacharach concerts will consist of American composer legend Burt Bacharach’s best-known hits. Awarded with three Oscars and six Grammys, Bacharach is most renowned for his songs The Look Of Love, Walk On By, Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head and I Say A Little Prayer, which will be interpreted by Nina Mya and Tuomo Prättälä. Teemu Takanen, who has arranged the music for the concert, will arrive to take his place as conductor.
The traditional chamber music concerts by Oulu Sinfonia’s Chamber Musicians will also continue in November. On Saturday 4 November, you will be able to hear these performers at Pikisaari’s various art facilities and on Sunday 5 November starting at 3 pm in Liminka at Heikki Sarvela Hall.
Text: Oulu Sinfonia
Photo: Wen Hong Low and I-Han Fu, c Kati Leinonen