Thus it was this week when NSO brought together the renowned Finnish conductor, Osmo Vänskä, music director of the Lahti Symphony Orchestra (the top group in Finland), and the spectacular Finnish violin soloist Leonidas Kavakos to play an all-Finnish concert featuring the music of 21st century composer Kalevi Aho and the now-old war horses of 20th century composer Jean Sibelius. We were pleased to attend the middle performance of this concert this past Friday night, the fifty-eighth birthday of composer Aho.
And what a remarkable evening it was!
NSO opened with Sibelius's Rakastava, Op. 14, a short three-movement tone poem for strings that originally had been conceived as a collection of love songs for a capella male voices. This opener gave us a chance to watch Maestro Vänskä at work; he is, to say the least, a unique conductor. From our vantage point on the fourth row just off the left center aisle (I like to sit in this general area to watch violin soloists "up close and personal"), we could see all the gestures and movements Vänskä used to coax the music from his charges. He is not a man to stand there waiving his arms in traditional one-two-three-four conducting patterns. Rather, he would bend over and droop; he would hold his arm in the air; he would glide with his hands; he would beckon encouragingly; he would do everything but using a traditional conducting pattern. And yet, not only did the musicians stay together, they brought forth incredible diversity of sound from the most delicate pianissimos to the most thunderous fortissimos.
They reserved the balance of the first half of the concert for the NSO premiere of Aho's Symphonic Dances: Hommage à Uuno Klami. Aho wrote this ballet in 2001, and shortly thereafter it received its premiere and first recording with the Lahti Symphony with Mo. Vänskä on the podium. The suite consists of four movements: Prelude, Return of the Flames and Dance (these first two movements being performed without a break between them), Grotesque Dance, and Dance of the Winds and Fires.
Aho has a very rich, full orchestral style, making frequent use of many of the orchestral instruments oft limited to "color" punctuation for the strings and woodwinds. The expanded percussion section all got a big workout in this piece. Aho likes his music to be loud; one might even consider some of the passages to be bombastic.
The Prelude was marked for its use of bells and chimes, and for introducing a theme that would be repeated throughout the work. By the time they played their way into Return of the Flames and Dance, the music could best be described as a cacaphony of sound; yet, the musical "noise" was still musical, devoid of the unfortunate mandatory dissonance and atonality that was demanded of so many 20th century composers. Grotesque Dance was the dream of the lower register instruments across the stage, being a tour de force for the double basses, tubas, contrabassoons, and the like. For the Dance of the Winds and Fires, they created a wind noise the origin of which I (and several other people I asked in the audience, including the usually all-knowledgeable ushers) could never determine.
My only criticism of the Symphonic Dances was the ending. Aho had built up his last movement to an incredible "noise" and music highlight that I could see was inspiring people to prepare themselves to leap up in uproarious applause upon its conclusion, but he didn't end it there; he opted to return to the original musical theme of the prelude in soft, pretty, and almost delicate tones. He thus cooled the audience's ardor, whereas I as a composer would have gone for the thrill and the cheap applause and acclaim.
After a too-short intermission (we were still some ways back in the bar line to get our wine when they began ringing the bells summoning the audience back into the house, and, thus, had to return thirsty), we went back to hear the Sibelius Concerto in D minor for Violin and Orchestra, Op.47, featuring Leonidas Kavakos as soloist.
Kavakos made his entrance in a most unusual ensemble. Now, the conductor and the men of the orchestra were all attired in the traditional white tie and tails; Kavakos wore what appeared to me to be a black Nehru jacket. He wore tuxedo trousers (the stripes down the sides are different than those adorning tail coat trousers) and his jacket was squared off in back like a tuxedo jacket with no vents. The buttons up and down the front were hidden behind a placket. A low Nehru-type collar appeared at the top. For those of you who weren't alive then, Nehru jackets were a brief unfortunate fashion statement in the 1960s where gentlemen wore these lightweight jackets that buttoned literally all the way up the front to the neck, eliminating the need for a traditional shirt, and featuring a little stand up collar. Kavakos's version looked a little too big for him, I thought, and then at the conclusion of the evening during the curtain calls, I noticed that he was wearing a black t-shirt underneath.
As Kavakos took his place, I thought he was one of the few musical artists I've ever seen who actually looked younger and more handsome in person than he did in his promotional head shot photograph printed in the program. He is a young man, probably in his mid-thirties, and he has a tall, slender body topped with a mop of longish, unkempt dark hair on his head; he wore a three-day stubble of beard.
His best accessory, though, wasn't his jacket or his hair, it was the 1692 Falmouth Stradivarius violin he played. What an amazing instrument! The 300-plus year-old instrument had been well-cared for, and had the sheen of new varnish. It had an incredible sonority, sometimes resonating so much that it had the sound of being miked (which, of course, it wasn't). The distinctive sound rang out clearly over the full orchestra, and the instrument allowed pianissimo passages to be played with incredible delicacy that was easily heard yet still very, very pianissimo.
He also had a very interesting bow. I could never really get a good look at it, but it certainly was not "standard issue;" I'm not a violin expert who can see bow shapes and identify makers and eras. This bow used white horse hair, one strand of which broke during the first movement and then waived and flailed in the air until at a convenient break in the violin part, Kavakos was able to bite off with his teeth the errant filament.
The concerto, of course, has become well-known and is a popular part of the violin concert repertoire. Kavakos has an intimate relationship with the work, including having been the only person approved by the Sibelius family to record the original version of the piece, which he did with Vänskä and the Lahti Symphony. This particular performance was spellbinding, and Kavakos is one of the very few solo artists I've seen rewarded by the audience with an immediate and nearly universal standing ovation. After leaving the stage, he was gone a long time until he returned by audience demand for another bow. Again, after an unusually long wait, he came out a second time, this time to play an unannounced encore that sounded like it must have been a virtuosic rendition of an old folk song. I particularly noticed how during the encore, even the orchestra string players watched him with rapt attention.
If only all of the concerts I see every year could be this memorable!
This is a picture of rowers on the river outside the Kennedy Center Friday night.
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