Artistic Director
Kevin Stalheim

Present Music
1840 N. Farwell #301
Milwaukee, WI 53202

Phone: 414-271-0711
Fax: 414-271-7998

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darwin grosse
the kmv group

HEARING THE NORTH

Friday, March 15, 2002 • 7:30 p.m.

Stoughton Opera House

Saturday, March 16, 2002 • 7:30 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum, Windhover Reception Hall

PROGRAM NOTES

The song Winter was hard, in Swedish, paints a dark portrait of the Scandinavian winter, but with some humorous overtones. The plodding rhythm and the modal harmonies contrast with the innocence of the children's voices.

Aulis Sallinen was born in 1935 in Salmi on the northern shore of Lake Ladoga (which the Soviet Union claimed in 1944). His early musical experience was playing the violin. Improvising (including jazz) on the piano led him to write his first compositions as a teenager. After studying with Aare Merikanto and Joonas Kokkonen at the Sibelius Academy, he joined the staff there.

In 1983 he shared the Wihuri International Sibelius prize with Penderecki. He is a member of the Royal Swedish Music Academy and Honorary Doctor of the Universities of Helsinki and Turku. The Finnish Government made him Professor of Arts for life in 1981 - the first appointment of its kind, thus making it possible for him to devote all of his time to composing.

His extensive catalogue of compositions has focused strongly on conventional forms and has at its core seven symphonies and five operas which have been performed world-wide. The most recent are his opera The Palace (1995) with libretto by Hans Magnus Enzensberger and Irene Dische and his 7^th Symphony: The Dreams of Gandalf which was premiered in 1996.

What’s an Estonian piece doing on a Scandinavian program?

The North is a collective name given to the five countries of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden.

Henna Salmela (Manager of PR and Promotion at Warner/Chappell Music Finland) says "Our languages, Finnish and Estonian, are very close to each other both ethnically and linguistically, and even have many similar words. Estonians belong to the Finno-Ugric peoples, along with the Finns and Hungarians. Our national anthems also have the same melody, composed by a German born Frederik Pacius, who lived in Finland and is sometimes called the Father of Finnish music. Estonia is bordered by the Gulf of Finland in the North, Russia in the East, and we Finns are also familiar with having the same big Eastern neighbor. Some people even claim that Finland or Iceland is not part of Scandinavia. However, there are several opinions about this. Even the Miss Scandinavia beauty contest has candidates from Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland and Norway. . .if that proves something [laughter]."

The title Architectonics is emblematic for Erkki-Sven Tüür: his starting-point for a new composition is an idea about its overall shape that he considers a vital factor of a work’s expression. Architectonics II for clarinet, cello and piano (1986), written for an ensemble of orchestra soloists of the Estonia Theatre, was one of the first works in which Tüür employed coloristic textures.

The musical material spring from a single note D, that is surrounded by quasi-improvisational phrases at the beginning, and retains its central position in the texture during the whole piece, excluding the climax section on the pedal point B. The pitch structure has been treated as a dramaturgic factor. The beginning is based on two halftone-whole tone modes which are symmetrical to the central note D, one of them ascending, the other descending. During the development, the texture is enriched by chromatics. The closing section returns to the initial rhythmic patterns, but melodic lines now follow the pure Dorian scale. (Merike Vaitmaa)

Erkki-Sven Tüür, born in Kärdla on the Estonian island of Hiiumaa in 1959, is one of the most remarkable composers of his generation. Largely self-taught, he studied percussion and flute at the Tallinn Music School, and later composition at the Tallinn Academy of Music. Among Tüür's many awards is the Cultural Prize of the Republic of Estonia (1991 and 1996). Today he is a freelance composer based in Tallinn.

Tüür's music is being heard more and more frequently not only throughout Europe but also in North America, Australia and Japan. His oeuvre comprises orchestral, concert and chamber music, oratorios, film scores and incidental music.

"Erkki-Sven Tüür's music sounds as if it had strolled through the history of music assimilating theoretical inspiration and practical experience along the way. Then it seems to have wrapped itself up in a cocoon immune to the outside world, there to develop its own contours." (Wolfgang Sandner)

Water Under Snow is Weary was written in the early 70’s to a poem by the Estonian writer and poet Eha Lättemäe. The meter of her poem inspired me to make a paraphrase over the ancient Finnish Kalevala melody, heard in its original form at the beginning of the introduction played by flute and piano. This has become my most popular composition. One of the reasons may be that the Tapiola Choir, originally conducted by Erkki Pohjola, used to keep it on its concert programs almost regularly for decades on its tours all over the world. It has been published in Finland (Fazer), USA (Walton) and Japan (Harmonia). (Harri Wessman)

Harri Wessman (b. 1949) studied musicology and foreign languages at the University of Helsinki from 1967 to 1973 and composition with Joonas Kokkonen, first privately and from 1973 to 1978 at the Sibelius Academy. He has been a music critic and a music editor for radio, and he has taught theory of music in a variety of places, including the Sibelius Academy.

Einojuhani Rautavaara (b. 1928) writes music that is extremely beautiful without being banal or blatantly superficial. Two of his most recent works premiered in 2000, his Concerto for Harp and Orchestra and his Eighth Symphony ("The Journey").

Rautavaara is a mystic who considers that his compositions already exist in 'another reality'. His job is to bring a composition into the world in one piece. "I firmly believe that compositions have a will of their own, though some people smile at the concept," he says. Mystic though he is, his career was firmly grounded in Modernism. He made his breakthrough in 1954, winning the Thor Johnson competition in the USA with A Requiem in Our Time. Rautavaara continued his studies abroad and became thoroughly acquainted with Serialist techniques. The confines of Serialism proved inadequate for Rautavaara, and he began to experiment with a variety of ideas. The most popular result is Cantus Arcticus (1972), a concerto for birds and orchestra. Aside from his symphonies, Rautavaara has written several operas and chamber works as well. Rautavaara’s operas include Thomas, Vincent, Auringon talo (House of the Sun) and Aleksis Kivi.

"If an artist is not a Modernist when he is young, he has no heart. And if he is a Modernist when he is old, he has no brain," the composer said in a press interview in Philadelphia in April 2000.

Arara Zagrara (1995/revised 2002) was originally scored for three accordions but I later realized it would naturally lend itself to other instruments. It has kept me occupied a number of times, and each arrangement has transformed the theme and taken it in a new direction. The theme is the root of endless variation, like a story or something we all have to tell, and in precisely our own way. The version to be heard here was made for this occasion.

The Arara theme is fictive music located somewhere in the Orient and the present day. It is not really folksy; it is my child-like way of imagining what I would hear in the Orient of my tales. Arara is joy.

(Kimmo Hakola, 29 January 2002, Paris)

Kimmo Hakola (born 27 July 1958) is considered one of the most interesting composer names of Finnish musical life. Hakola studied at the Sibelius Academy under Einojuhani Rautavaara and Eero Hämeenniemi and won the Unesco Composers' Rostrum in 1987 with his String Quartet — a work that was acknowledged as a masterpiece and consequently played over radio networks in more than 30 countries. In 1991 Hakola won the Unesco Rostrum again with his work Capriole for cello and clarinet. Hakola's music has been performed at several major music events including the ISCM World Music Days as well as at the new music festivals of Edinburgh, Huddersfield, Witten and Ars Musica in Bruxelles, among others. He was one of the featured composers at the 1998 Musica Nova festival in Helsinki.

The music of Kimmo Hakola is a combination of uncompromising dramatic power and exceptional musical quality. Musicianship is manifest in all Hakola's achievements resulting in communicativeness and richness of sound that speak of the composer's delight at discovering his very own idiom. Hakola's oeuvre includes chamber works, the weightiest of them being the two string quartets and the Clarinet Quintet from 1998. Among other works Hakola has composed a Sinfonietta, two operas and two concertos. The Piano Concerto premiered at the Helsinki Festival in 1996, and is an unprecedented work in new Finnish music in its expressive range, variety of styles and scope. The recent Clarinet Concerto, premiered in 2001, was described as a roaring success. Mastersingers of Mars is a cartoon opera including elements unusual for an opera, and Hakola’s second opera The Mustard Seed is a serious study of a Finnish religious dissident.

Kimmo Hakola is the composer-in-residence of the Joensuu City Orchestra. He has acted as Artistic Director of the Musica nova festival since 1999.

Songs from the Sea by Aulis Sallinen is a collection of four songs.

The second song in the collection, Shipshape, is in a rollicking 3/4. This chantey-style piece sputters along, almost like a boat with a sputtering motor.

The final song, Ballad tells of a traveler far from home, reflecting on the journey and those left behind. A gently-undulating choral accompaniment supports the expressive melody.

CHAMBER CONCERTO

The history of music is the history of mastery; man has developed instruments, and himself in playing them. Instrumental mastery is not an end in itself, but freedom of musical expression calls for a command of the chosen instrument. Music manifests and lends substance to feelings, often without words, but always across the entire universe of human experience.

The Chamber Concerto is, as its name suggests, ensemble music cast in a concerto-like mould. Each member of the ensemble is a soloist. The result is a Babel of discourse in which each narrator tells his own story, endowing it with all the richness bestowed on him by life.

Talking about music, even music with a story, is usually irksome, because music is not words. I am, however, venturing to make an exception: I want to put music into words, to give the work a new surface dimension, i.e. not as a narrative about music but as counterpoint to that which is possible.

Furioso emerges above the hectic babble of voices in which each has something important to say but is given no room to say it. At the end, agreement is reached on the procedure to be observed. There is something Kafkan about all this.

Tempestoso is an aftershock of the storm, as the disruptive moment in nature merges with something experienced in a dream, taking place at this very moment in time. Everything is straining towards equilibrium.

Amoroso is a love story, and about love as a power. To tell the truth, I often think that the only important role of music in this world is to tell about love.

Forza. Con fuoco is energy, not aggressive but resolute. It keeps things moving. It has something of real life about it. The daily grind.

Misterioso. The music of this movement is not sad in the traditional way. I respect grief, which has a time and a purpose. This music about grief is more a hymn of praise to the continuity of life and eternity. The movement ends not in near silence but in a celebration of the beauty of eternity and the freedom of all things.

(Kimmo Hakola, 29 January 2002, Paris)