Recenzii de producție anterioare
12"Jenny Carlstedt, the Finnish-Swedish mezzo-soprano, seemed to take into herself all that had gone before: hers is not a large voice, but her identification with Nietzsche’s meditation on human suffering was total. As the embodiment of Earth’s sorrow (to borrow a phrase from Das Lied von der Erde) she became the focal point of the whole symphony, rather as Dame Sarah Connolly did in Sir Simon Rattle’s performance of the Second Symphony in last year’s Proms. In Urlicht, the mezzo’s passionate longing is to ascend to heaven; here, it is to find the joy that lies deeper than pain. Carlstedt seemed not to notice when the movement ended and the next began; she seemed no part of it, frozen in her D minor anguish as the choirs carolled brightly around her in F major. It was most moving; and it made the sensation of balm as the violins stole in to begin the finale all the keener."-/ "This was music-making of a high order; and – as a performance of this work ought to be – a great experience. At the end, the mezzo-soprano Jenny Carlstedt had to wipe away tears before taking her bow. I don’t imagine that she was alone in doing so"
"Carlstedt’s voice was like the starlight in Mahler’s inky black orchestral sky. Flowing and clear,-"
‘Total Immersion’ is a good way of describing the music of the Finnish composer, Kaija Saariaho. The spectral sonorities that she creates by synthesising, manipulating and layering timbres, harmonies and rhythms form vast, dynamic sonic landscapes that shift and shimmer, and seem literally to embrace the listener, drawing them into a multi-sensory world. The BBC Symphony Orchestra’s evening concert included the UK premiere of Saarikoski Songs, settings of five meditative poems from Pentti Saarikoski’s collection, Alue (The District) which muse on nature and decay. The cycle was commissioned by the Finnish soprano Anu Komsi, a long-term collaborator with Saariaho. The first song ‘Luonnon kasvot’ (The face of Nature) was composed in 2013. Four years later, ‘Jokaisella on tämänsä’ (Everyone from now on will have their own) and ‘Kaikki tämä’ (All of this) followed, and the 15-minute cycle was completed during the pandemic lockdown of April 2020. The orchestral version of Saarikoski Songs was commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Gewandhausorchester and first heard in Boston in February 2022, with Komsi as soloist and conducted by Andris Nelsons.
Considering the slowly mutating textures strung out at the start of this final concert in the BBC’s day devoted to Kaija Saariaho, it may be hard to imagine that this Paris-based Finnish composer has written five operas, each with degrees of dramatic conflict. Reviewing her latest, Innocence, last month, Richard Morrison in this paper wrote of its “visceral swirl” and “volatile mood changes”, with the whole “designed like a thriller”. None of those ingredients was on the table in Du cristal, though that doesn’t mean that this early fruit of Saariaho’s association with French “spectralist” composers, devoted to dissecting the innards of sounds, was in any way unrewarding. Every work in the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s concert, conducted by Sakari Oramo with precision
Prommers returned to the Royal Albert Hall after two years for James MacMillan and a ‘Golden Age of Broadway’ concert
And so, after two years’ absence, only partially relieved by last year’s shortened and audience-free Proms season, here we sat, to let the sound of music creep in our ears. Dalia Stasevska, the Finnish Principal Guest Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra and director of last years’ Last Night, opened this year’s Proms season with a well-conceived programme of Vaughan Williams’ Serenade to Music, Poulenc’s dramatic Organ Concerto, a newly commissioned work by Sir James MacMillan and Sibelius’s Second Symphony. It was a night to remember, for many reasons.
