Uniting the Baltics With Music

STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN:
   The Baltic Sea Festival, founded in 2003 by Esa-Pekka Salonen, Valery Gergiev and Michael Tyden (general manager of Stockholm’s Berwald Concert Hall), has lofty goals cultural, environmental and political.
   “A new Hanseatic League” is what Tyden jokingly called it at this year's opening night reception at Berwald Hall Aug. 20. Hopes are to involve all nine countries that touch the Baltic, Sweden, Finland, Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Germany and Denmark, plus Scandinavian neighbor Norway.
The political and the environmental work may take some doing “Why can't you call the police if somebody is polluting the Baltic?” Salonen's kids asked him, he said – and there is lingering animosity toward Russia, particularly in the Baltic states occupied by the former Soviet Union until little over a decade ago.
Culturally, however, the festival is already a resounding success and artistic director Salonen hopes that music will be a catalyst for progress in the other areas, as well.
   The second half of the annual event included two concerts by Salonen one all-Nordic, with the Swedish Radio Orchestra, and the festival finale, Mahler's Eighth Symphony with the Helsinki Philharmonic and one by Paavo Järvi and the Estonian National Orchestra featuring Estonian Erkki-Sven Tüür's “Magma” with percussionist Evelyn Glennie.
   Originally, there were to be two Järvi concerts, but his Aug. 23 date with St. Petersburg's Mariinsky Orchestra in Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony was canceled at the last minute because of a funding shortfall. This on top of the omission of Järvi's photo from the official festival poster gave Estonia and the Baltic States less visibility than they deserved. Still, the cancellation gave this reviewer the opportunity to hear the Swedish Radio Choir led by Peter Dijkstra in a late evening a capella concert at Stockholm’s neo-Gothic Oscar Church.
The theme was loss, particularly of loved ones at sea, opening with Finnish composer Jaakko Mäntyjärvi's “Canticum Calamitatis Maritimae” dedicated to the 852 who perished in the “Estonia” ferryboat disaster on the way from Tallinn to Stockholm in 1994. It's a vivid, highly emotional work blending verses from the Requiem, the Psalms and news reports of the accident. The opening soprano solo over soft whisperings in the choir (a folk-like variation on “Nearer My God to Thee,” supposedly sung on the Titanic) was aching effective in the darkened church. The music built to a stormy climax before sinking back into “Amens” and a reprise of the lone soprano lament.
   Also on the program were Brahms' touching “Warum ist das Licht,” Frank Martin's sea-evoking “Songs of Ariel” and opening excerpts from the Vespers portion of Einojuhani Rautavaara's neo-Byzantine “Vigilia,” adapted from his “All Night Vigil” for the Orthodox Festival of the Beheading of St. John the Baptist, all beautifully rendered by Dijkstra and the 32-voice choir.
   Finnish born Salonen took in Sweden as well as Finland on his Aug. 24 concert with the SRO in Berwald Hall. Representing Finland were the world premiere of Kimmo Hakola's “Maro,” a festival commission, and Sibelius' Symphony No. 7. Their Swedish cognates were Anders Hillborg's “Eleven Gates” and Wilhelm Stenhammar's 1913 Serenade.
   Esperanto for “Sea,” Hakola's “Maro” is a kind of latter day “La Mer,” a vivid, technicolor painting from the first dash of spray (piano, wind chimes, harp) to a fully-conceived storm, with thunder sheet, flashes of piccolo “lightning,” contra-bassoon blasts and general turbulence. An underlying narrative is suggested by a recurrent melodic fragment and a protracted ending, which seeks repose in a stubbornly repeated coda. A handsome, well-crafted piece, it served as a fine musical metaphor for the Baltic, the festival's unifying element.
It was the European premiere of Hillborg's “Eleven Gates,” a whimsical mosaic commissioned and introduced by Salonen and the Los Angeles Philharmonic at Walt Disney Hall in April. “Gates” refers to the work's eleven parts, which have subtitles ranging from the concrete, like “Drifting into D Major,” a harmonically static introduction reminiscent of the opening of “Das Rheingold,” to the surreal, like “Suddenly in the Room with Chattering Mirrors” and “Toy Pianos on the Surface of the Sea.”
   “My curiosity doesn't thrive on doing these classical forms where everything is rational and this leads to that. It isn't fun enough,” said Hillborg, 52, who comes from a mixed pop/classical background. Hence, the sudden piano chord at the end of “Drifting,” a reference to “A Day in the Life” from the Beatles' “Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band” and the insertion of a tune from a Donald Duck cartoon into “Confused Dialogues with Woodpeckers” (Hillborg's salute to Disney Hall).
   Representing the older generation, Stenhammar's elegant, 35-minute Serenade was beautifully performed and left a warm, happy glow.
Salonen favored slow tempos and palpable textures in Sibelius' valedictory symphony, his last before falling silent for the last 30 years of his life. You could almost feel the blizzard of strings and the warmth of the trombone's sunset glow, while the mournful ending, shot through with veins of color, was almost painful.
   The Estonian National Orchestra, an ensemble re-constituted since the country threw off Soviet occupation in 1991, has achieved a new level of visibility with its recordings under Järvi, the orchestra's artistic adviser since 2002. Tüür's aptly named “Magma” was recorded with Glennie in June for their next Virgin Classics collaboration. It made a fittingly volcanic impression at Berwald Hall Aug. 25 on a program kindled even further by Stravinsky's “Firebird” Suite and the Symphony No, 6 by Estonian composer Lepo Sumera (Tüür's mentor and teacher). Opener was Debussy's “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun.”
   A former rock star in Estonia, Tüür, 46, has mastered just about every compositional technique there is on the way to crafting his own style, which is deeply intellectual though without necessarily sounding so. Written for Glennie, “Magma” is not a concerto but a 30-minute symphony with solo percussion (Tüür's Symphony No. 4). Glennie moved among three sets of instruments metallic on the left in front of the first violins, wood facing the cellos and a jazz/rock drum set in the middle.
   Paavo Järvi conducting the Estonian National Orchestra in Stockholm with percussionist Evelyn Glennie (Erkki-Sven Tüür's "Magma")
   The two movements, Andante furioso and Andante, reflected the outer groupings, with a sizzling improvised cadenza separating them.
The impression, as implied by the title, was of hot energy under pressure bubbling up from time to time. Performing the work in a new hall with limited rehearsal was a challenge for the ensemble, with the hearing impaired artist picking up vibrations through her bare feet, but Järvi kept a tight rein on things and the impression was overwhelming.
   Andante furioso is also the title of the first movement of Sumera's Symphony No. 6, completed just before his death in 2000. The big furioso episodes with their “Dies Irae”-like brass do not bubble up here, but strike with blitzkrieg force, and there is some woodwind carping a la Strauss' “Heldenleben.” The second movement has a mournful quality, with its alto flute undulations and Mahleresque strings and harp (the beginning recalls the Adagietto of Mahler's Symphony No. 5).
   Berwald Hall's wooden surfaces acted as a resonator for the basses at the beginning of “Firebird,” which unfolded vividly, Järvi calling for an exquisite soft transition to the final chorale.
   The festival finale Aug. 26 electrified the hall as Salonen returned to lead the Helsinki Philharmonic in Mahler's Eighth Symphony. Joining them were a bevy of fine vocal soloists, the Swedish and Latvian Radio Choirs, Mikaeli Chamber Choir of Stockholm and Cantores Minores, a boy choir from Helsinki. The opening “Veni Creator Spiritus” built to an ear-splitting conclusion, fortified by offstage brass (a neighbor in the audience could be seen holding her ears)..
Part Two began starkly with the sting of cymbal and a keening oboe solo. Soprano soloists Soile-Isokoski, Ricarda Merbeth and Lisa Gustafsson, mezzo-sopranos Lilli Paasikivi and Hilke Andersen, tenor Mika Pohjonen, baritone Tommi Hakala, bass Ain Anger and the choruses filled the hall with rapturous sounds. The inspired Salonen signaled the final chord with a mighty thrust of his arm, like a quarterback firing a touchdown pass.
   The music-loving Baltic region brims with festivals. Because of its excellence, international visibility and just plain big ideas for creating a new regional identity, the Baltic Sea Festival seems poised to become a showcase for them all.
   The parties are committed. Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra are on board through 2009 and the announcement of a major sponsor for 2007 is expected soon, said managing director Tyden.
(first published Sept. 21 at www.musicalamerica.com)