New Hanseatic League for the Baltic

   Stockholm, Sweden.
   The Baltic Sea Festival is a combustible mix.
Founded in 2003 by Esa-Pekka Salonen, Valery Gergiev and Michael Tyden, managing director of Stockholm’s Berwald Concert Hall, it has the critical mass to become a sought-after summer festival destination.
   The 2006 event – August 20-26 in intimate (1300-seat), acoustically excellent Berwald Hall – featured festival artistic director Salonen in Mahler’s Eighth Symphony, Gergiev in Shostakovich’s Seventh (“Leningrad”), Paavo Järvi in Estonian Erkki-Sven Tüür’s “Magma” with percussionist Evelyn Glennie and Manfred Honeck in Shostakovich’s Fifth.
   There were two world premieres, Russian/Swedish composer Victoria Borisova Ollas’ “Open Ground” commissioned by the festival, and Finnish composer Kimmo Hakola’s “Maro.” In addition, Salonen led the European premiere of Anders Hillborg’s “Eleven Gates,” which he introduced to considerable acclaim with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at Disney Hall in May (it’s already available on iTunes).
   Participating were the Swedish Radio Orchestra, Mariinsky Theater Orchestra (St. Petersburg), the Helsinki Philharmonic and the Estonian National Orchestra. Soloists and chorus members from the Mariinsky Theater performed Verdi’s “Falstaff” with Gergiev, and Salonen led an all-Nordic program including the Hakola and Hillborg works, Stenhammar’s 1913 Serenade and Sibelius’ Seventh Symphony.
   There was a parallel series of late evening choral and chamber music concerts in Stockholm churches and a choral seminar on the last day. There were excellent programs by both the Swedish and Latvian Radio Choirs and three concerts by the improbably named, five-member Grieg Ensemble of Moscow (oboe, piano, clarinet and two violins).
   Only the rain, breaking a month’s worth of sunshine, put a damper on the event.
   Now in its fourth year, the Baltic Sea Festival is administered and run by the staff of Berwald Concert Hall, an Erik Ahnborg/Sune Lindström design literally built into a rock on Dag Hammarskjöld’s Way in 1979. It began as a glimmer in Tyden’s eye during a visit to the White Nights Festival in St. Petersburg in 1999 when he met Gergiev and invited him to conduct in Stockholm. Later meetings with Salonen and Gergiev led to the first festival in August, 2003.
   “It’s not easy. I know now,” said Tyden, who, regrettably, was forced to cancel one of the 2006 festival concerts for lack of funding (Aug. 23, with Järvi and the Mariinsky Orchestra in Shostakovich’s Tenth).
   “We started with talking to the European Union and we didn’t get any money. So the first year became a loss. It was only ticket income. The next year we had meetings with the ministers of Russia and Sweden, They gave us money, then last year we received money from Poland, Finland, Russia and Sweden. This year is Sweden, Finland, Russia and Stockholm City.”
   There is some sponsorship now (Scandic, Audi), which Tyden hopes to increase in a big way in 2007 with the naming of a season sponsor.
The festival has much besides star power to sell it. It has lofty, timely ideas, like helping preserve the environment and fostering closer relationships among the Baltic countries. “We are re-creating in a way a new Hanseatic League,” said Tyden at the opening night reception.
   In partnership with the festival, the World Wildlife Fund held a seminar on illegal fishing in the Baltic, plus 30-minute sessions on a variety of ecological topics before each concert at Berwald Hall.
   For the second year in a row, concerts were held aboard Silja Line cruises in the Baltic, and in a presentation that was as much marketing as enlightenment, Salonen invited business leaders to an interactive workshop co-sponsored by Arts and Business Sweden in which he and the New Stockholm Chamber Orchestra demonstrated how a conductor and orchestra work together to reach a common goal.
   A major international festival in this part of the world is overdue. Fueled by stars like Salonen, Gergiev and Järvi, a stream of prolific musical talent is emerging from Scandinavia and the Baltic countries. The adulation with which Swedish clarinetist Martin Fröst was received on the Aug. 20 opening concert underscored that fact. The tall, 36-year-old blond has captured attention by incorporating choreography and mime into his performances (including a celebrated telecast with Swedish mezzo Malena Ernman) but showmanship had little to do with his sublime reading of the Mozart Clarinet Concerto.
   For added historical resonance, Fröst performed on the basset clarinet, as the work was originally conceived. If “virtuosic” can be applied to phrasing, it fit Frost’s first solo passage, whose shapeliness was almost startling. Low notes were dusky and distinct, and soft passages had a rose-petal quality, so lightly did he touch them. The Adagio was a heavenly excursion, and Fröst topped off the work with a light, cheery Rondo/Allegro. His encore, Eden Ahbez’ “Nature Boy” (reference Baz Luhrmann’s “Moulin Rouge”), a jazzy number spun out over a cello’s pedal D, kept the noisy ovation coming.
   Honeck, in his final appearance as chief conductor of the Swedish Radio Orchestra (he becomes music director of Stuttgart Opera in 2007-08), made a persuasive case for Borisova-Ollas’ “Open Ground.” Inspired by Salmon Rushdie’s novel “The Ground Beneath Her Feet” (don’t take things for granted, they can fall apart at any time), it was commissioned by the festival in honor of Sweden-Russia Year, a Swedish government initiative to promote trade and communication between the two countries.
   It is an evocative, coloristic work, whose images did conjure a comfortable world interrupted by a sudden, violent disturbance. Initial tranquility gave way to bubbly, repetitive rhythms as the music pitched downward into big waves of sound. A melee of strings and winds led to what sounded like an Indiana Jones trumpet call. A cinematic melody surmounted low, menacing brasses and renewed waves of sound, signaling a happy, or at least resigned ending which trailed off in wisps of harp, percussion, flute and string tremolo.
Anniversaries dictated more Mozart (his 250th), with excerpts from act III of      “Idomeneo,” stylishly sung by tenor Klas Hedlund and the Swedish Radio Choir. Shostakovich’s Fifth (honoring centennial of the composer's birth) was somewhat uneven, particularly in the opening movement, which lacked grit and menace. Best was the Largo, which Honeck built from super-soft to wrenching, making the ambivalence of the finale, where he observed the ritenuto tempo at the end, that much more telling.
   Monday and Tuesday were Gergiev’s turn. The “Leningrad” symphony was a sellout, with people waiting for unclaimed tickets at the box office. The fiery Russian maestro and his Mariinsky Orchestra were of one mind here, dwarfing any performance of the work this reviewer has ever heard. The obsessive march that invades the first movement built from the merest taps of snare drum to an eviscerating climax, given delightful visual and aural punch by the orchestra’s prodigious cymbalist, who shattered the air with crashes prepared low at his sides, then thrust high into the air in a single swift, smooth arc and allowed to ring picturesquely over his head.
   Gergiev, who led with a mini-baton, often crouching and signaling intensity with rapid movements of his fingers, crafted a ghostly little dance in the Moderato, where the bass clarinet slithered against flutter-tongued flutes, and the strings trailed off at the end sounding both pitiful and touching. Remorseless winds and pleading strings set up the devastating Adagio, which ended in a soft shudder of timpani and strings. The lingering, torturous passages in the siege-like finale opened out at last in a huge declaration of victory, prompting a hail of bravos from the crowd.
   Despite the non-arrival of props and set pieces for the Aug. 22 concert performance of “Falstaff,” Verdi’s comic opera was well served by the Mariinsky soloists, whose sharp acting skills complemented an evening of splendid singing. (Berwald Hall chairs came in handy a number of times, including serving as a makeshift hiding place for Falstaff in Act II).
   Baritone Edem Umerov headed a remarkably well balanced cast, all in contemporary dress, with attitudes to match. Among them were a sexy Mistress Ford (soprano Tatiana Pavlovskaia), a savvy Mistress Quickly (mezzo-soprano Larisa Dyadkova) and a winsome Nannetta (soprano Olga Trifonova). Gergiev led with energy and precision and the crowd had a very good time indeed.
(first published at www.musicalamerica.com Sept. 8, 2006)