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Arvo Volmer

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Heli Jürgenson

Estonian National Opera

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Estonian National Opera Orchestra

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Estonian National Opera Symphony Concert: Concert Various

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Brahms’s Rhapsody Op. 53 for contralto, male chorus and orchestra (also known as “Alto Rhapsody”) is inspired by Goethe’s poem “Winter Journey in the Harz” (“Harzreise im Winter”) and his romantic feelings for Robert and Clara Schumann’s daughter Julie. The piece was written in 1869 for the wedding of Julie. It describes a journey to the Harz Mountains by a young misanthrope, cast out of society and wounded by love, wandering aimlessly in the dark forest, scorning everything and everyone. The wilderness of his surroundings completely erases his tracks as if he never passed that way.

 

            The “Schicksalslied” (Song of Destiny), Op. 54, is one of several major choral works by Brahms, and it was completed in 1871. In the summer of 1868, while visiting his friend Albert Dietrich in the North German coastal town of Wilhelmshaven, Johannes Brahms was drawn to the poem “Hyperions Schicksalslied” by Friedrich Hölderlin. Whereas Hölderlin contrasts the everlasting bliss of souls in heaven with the pain and suffering of human existence, ending on a note of bleak resignation, Brahms concludes the work with a return to the heavenly radiance of the orchestral introduction. Amid expansive phrases, the choral and orchestral lines weave together in a divine conversation. As with the Requiem, his message seems to be that hope and consolation for the living may be found here on earth.

 

“Do you know what Rococo means?” Tchaikovsky asked Wilhelm Fitzenhagen, professor of cello at the Moscow Conservatory, and answered himself: “It is a carefree feeling of well-being,” and he sang a melody, which had the rhythm of a gavotte. Fitzenhagen, to whom the “Variations on a Rococo Theme” Op. 33 is dedicated, premiered the work in Moscow on November 30, 1877. Variation-form plays with a simple melody in various emotional guises. One variation transforms the theme into an elegant dance, another a doleful aria, and another a virtuosic race to the finish line. It is one of the most favourite pieces for cellists, allowing to show the beauty of the instrument in its full colours.

 

Estonian National Opera Orchestra conducted by Arvo Volmer will perform all symphonies by Jean Sibelius within the series of Estonian National Opera symphony concerts. In autumn, Estonian National Opera Orchestra will perform Sibelius’ Symphony No. 4 in A minor, Op. 63.

Sibelius called the fourth “a psychological symphony.” It is the stuff of Expressionism, murky dreams, and Sigmund Freud’s excursions into the unconscious. Completed in 1911, as Europe teetered on the brink of the First World War, its atmosphere was once summed up by Sibelius with a gloomy quote by the playwright, August Strindberg: “One feels pity for human beings”. The symphony’s tone was both modern and introspective, and it confused the audience so much that the applause was subdued. Nowadays, the fourth symphony has come to be recognised as one of the great masterpieces of the 20th century and one of Sibelius’s most magnificent achievements.

While composing the fourth, Sibelius worked on an orchestral song setting of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven”, commissioned by the prominent soprano, Aino Ackté. The project remained unfinished, but some of the music found its way into the symphony’s final movement.

Despite the mixed feelings with which the symphony received after its world premiere, the critic Oskar Merikanto understood its significance, “I feel as if entirely new worlds were now opening for Sibelius as a composer of symphonies, worlds which have not been shown to others and which he, with his astonishingly highly developed sense of colour and melody, can see and describe to others.”

English

Estonian National Opera Symphony Concert by Various, Da (2022/2022), Direttore d'orchestra Arvo Volmer, Concert Hall, Tallinn, Estonia

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