It is fitting to play Sergei Prokofiev‘s (1891–1953) First Violin Concerto (1917) in early spring. The idea for the work came to Prokofiev as a young composer not yet 25, and the concerto took shape at roughly the same time as the popular, high-spirited “Classical Symphony”. It is said that for many people a love of Prokofiev’s music began with precisely this First Violin Concerto, and one of those many was the pianist Sviatoslav Richter, who said: “If you love music, it seems to me impossible not to be captivated by [this work]. The impression is as though you were opening a window for the first time in spring, and restless sounds came drifting into the room from the street for the first time.”
The soloist is Elīna Bukša – one of the most gifted violinists of Latvia’s younger generation. She received the Latvian Grand Music Award 2012 in the category “Debut of the Year” and is a laureate of the prestigious Windsor International String Competition. Since her debut with the Liepāja Symphony Orchestra at the age of 12, Elīna Bukša has appeared with all of Latvia’s professional orchestras and with major symphonic ensembles in Belgium, Japan, Russia, Poland and elsewhere. She has played in halls such as the Laeiszhalle in Hamburg, the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall in Moscow, the Tampere Philharmonic Hall, and Brussels’s Bozar, Flagey, and has performed with Gérard Caussé, Maria João Pires, Augustin Dumay, Frank Braley, Henri Demarquette, the Quatuor Modigliani and others.
For the label Alpha Elīna Bukša has recorded two discs of the violin concertos of Camille Saint-Saëns and Édouard Lalo, both of which won the acclaim of European critics. The Gramophone writes: “Elīna Bukša deserves praise; her commitment never falters for a moment. Her reading has sudden tension and dazzling passagework. The violinist leads the listener attentively and carefully to a thrilling finale.”
Elīna Bukša plays a violin made by Domenico Montagnana in 1723, lent to her by the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel.
The title of the concert on 17 March is borrowed from Shakespeare, whose famous play “Romeo and Juliet” became, in the 1930s, the basis of Sergei Prokofiev’s ballet. The Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow commissioned this large-scale work, on condition that the ending be a happy one – the young couple would not sink into death’s embrace but rise happily towards a new life. Prokofiev’s musical language still struck many as unfamiliar at the time, and the dancers in particular made no secret of their views. A famous anecdote tells of a rehearsal of the balcony scene when the leading man asked ironically whom exactly they were burying, to which the composer shot back: “the bad manners of ballet dancers”. The ballet was premiered in Brno, and only afterwards staged in the Soviet Union. Several themes from this work are extremely popular, above all the sweeping, even aggressive, sharply dotted theme depicting the feud of the Montagues and the Capulets.
Normunds Šnē has assembled a suite of his own from fragments of the ballet. It begins with the coolly observed, vital scenes “Folk Dance” and “Morning Dance”, followed by the refined “Masks” and the episode just mentioned, “Montagues and Capulets”, ushered in by wind chords that sketch an almost supernatural vision; and with the last two movements, “The Death of Tybalt” and “Romeo at Juliet’s Grave”, we approach the heart of Shakespeare’s tragedy.
It is a pleasure that, after a very long absence, the LNSO repertoire welcomes back the first large-scale symphonic work by Pēteris Vasks (1946), “Rush Hour” (1978, also found in the archives under the title “Music for Orchestra”). It was premiered on 2 November 1979 in the Great Guild, with the LNSO conducted by Jānis Zirnis. Here is his recollection: “When I was still considered a young [conductor], I had to take part in a concert of young conductors and young composers. I was assigned Pēteris Vasks’s “Rush Hour”. On first looking at the score, orchestral players known throughout the republic said: what is this spasm music, they have palmed it off on you… After the concert those same players were of quite another opinion. I like Pēteris Vasks’s music very much.”
The eminent musicologist Vija Muške, a woman of broad outlook, wrote in a review that “P. Vasks’s combinations of orchestral colour are highly distinctive, at times unheard of in Latvian music, yet they render the image of our contemporary in sharp relief”, adding that the music “is not programmatic; it depicts in general terms the psychological processes of modern man in the setting of a great city”.
Māris Čaklais, a poet Pēteris Vasks holds in high esteem, writes in his poem “Rush Hour” (1972): “Like a lynx the rush hour prowls around a man | with its claws drawn in. | Man, you who are stuck fast in the sound, | are you ready for your hour?”
And finally Sebastian Fagerlund (Fagerlund, 1972) – one of the most interesting Finnish composers of the middle generation. He lives in Helsinki, works freelance and writes mainly for orchestra; his music flows, moves briskly and is generous in sound. The flow is often interrupted by lyrical, fragile episodes, and this alternation of motion and stillness is one of the most characteristic marks of Fagerlund’s musical language. Fagerlund’s works are played all over the world. Since 2013 he has been artistic director of the RUSK chamber music festival (Jakobstad, Finland). Fagerlund, whose native language is Swedish although he naturally speaks fluent Finnish, once studied the violin; among his musical influences one usually finds Edgard Varèse, Witold Lutosławski and Mark-Anthony Turnage (Turnage), and he is very fond of cinema. The composer does not object when his music is called cinematic, but he gives it no narrative or plot – and most likely there is none there at all.
Vivid, poetic, brimming with intense inner life and very beautiful, the symphonic work Stonework (2015) is one of Sebastian Fagerlund’s major achievements of recent years; it was premiered almost simultaneously (within a few days) in three countries – Norway (Bergen), Sweden (Gothenburg) and Finland (Tampere). The conductors were such distinguished figures as Edward Gardner and Hannu Lintu, as well as the rising star Santtu-Matias Rouvali.
Elīna Bukša – violin