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Shostakovich’s magnificent Leningrad Symphony

When Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7 premièred in 1942, it was performed by musicians who themselves had survived the siege of Leningrad. The composer himself had been evacuated and watched from a distance as his home town burned. This monumental work, both in length and in scope, has grown into one of Shostakovich’s most popular pieces. For a large part of his life, Pēteris Vasks also suffered under Soviet oppression and for him, music meant a freedom of sorts from external control and censorship. He also wants to use his music to contribute harmony and beauty to a wounded and ravaged world.

He has been called the new conducting wonder, Finnish Klaus Mäkelä, who will take up his position as the first guest conductor of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra in September 2018. At the age of 21, he was the youngest ever conductor to be granted an extended contract with the orchestra. Of the three Shostakovich symphonies that Mäkelä will be conducting this season, number seven may well be the most dramatic. At least in terms of the history behind its composition.

The year is 1941. Leningrad is on fire, the city besieged by Nazi forces. In December, Dmitri Shostakovich puts the final touches to his Symphony No. 7. It is intended as a tribute to his native city, but its première in March the following year has to take place in the city of Kuybyshev (present-day Samara), on the banks of the Volga, to which Shostakovich and the other Leningrad residents have been evacuated. Over the following months, a microfilmed score is smuggled to the west and the symphony is also performed in London, New York and Massachusetts.

On August 9, 1942, it is finally time for the Leningrad première with an orchestra comprising 40-50 surviving musicians, who collapsed from exhaustion several times during the rehearsals. The concert has drawn a vast crowd, both inside and outside the the Grand Philharmonia Hall: the concert is broadcast over loudspeakers, and can also be heard by the German troops on the front. The music goes down in history as a symbol of the resistance to the oppression.

The Latvian composer Pēteris Vasks has also written music as an act of resistance. His early music refers to Latvia’s vulnerable position, located as it was between two superpowers. Until 1991, he used his music in the struggle for his country’s independence from the Soviet Union. But his heartfelt music is in equal part inspired by nature: “Nature is magical. I take go for walks in the forest and cannot imagine composing in a large city. Nature inhabits my soul.”

Like his Baltic colleague Arvo Pärt, Vasks’s music has gradually become more minimalist. He has abandoned the experimental and aggressive in favour of harmony, in both expression and content. Each piece has its meaning and as a conductor, Vasks wants to improve the balance of good and evil in the world. “I love music above all else, it forms the very core of my being. In my music, I primarily want to share my joy and my love, as well as the sense that harmony is possible – at least in music.”

Pēteris Vasks, who was the Stockholm New Music Festival’s main composer in 1996, has written choral works as well as orchestra and chamber music. Pater Noster from 1991 is composed for choir and string orchestra. Laudate Dominum was written in 2016, originally for choir and organ, but was soon rearranged for choir and orchestra as well.

Text: Anna Hedelius


SWEDISH RADIO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA dot SWEDISH RADIO CHOIR dot 2018/2019
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Participants

 

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The Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra is a multiple-award-winning ensemble renowned for its high artistic standard and stylistic breadth, as well as collaborations with the world’s finest composers, conductors, and soloists. It regularly tours all over Europe and the world and has an extensive and acclaimed recording catalogue.

Daniel Harding has been Music Director of the SRSO since 2007, and since 2019 also its Artistic Director. His tenure will last throughout the 2024/2025 season. Two of the orchestra’s former chief conductors, Herbert Blomstedt and Esa-Pekka Salonen, have since been named Conductors Laureate, and continue to perform regularly with the orchestra.

The Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra performs at Berwaldhallen, concert hall of the Swedish Radio, and is a cornerstone of Swedish public service broadcasting. Its concerts are heard weekly on the Swedish classical radio P2 and regularly on national public television SVT. Several concerts are also streamed on-demand on Berwaldhallen Play and broadcast globally through the EBU.

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32 professional choristers make up the Swedish Radio Choir: a unique, dynamic instrument hailed by music-lovers and critics all over the world. The Swedish Radio Choir performs at Berwaldhallen, concert hall of the Swedish Radio, as well as on tours all over the country and the world. Also, they are heard regularly by millions of listeners on Swedish Radio P2, Berwaldhallen Play and globally through the EBU.

The award-winning Latvian conductor Kaspars Putniņš was appointed Chief Conductor of the Swedish Radio Choir in 2020. Since January 2019, its choirmaster is French orchestral and choral conductor Marc Korovitch, with responsibility for the choir’s vocal development.

The Swedish Radio Choir was founded in 1925, the same year as Sweden’s inaugural radio broadcasts, and gave its first concert in May that year. Multiple acclaimed and award-winning albums can be found in the choir’s record catalogue. Late 2023 saw the release of Kaspars Putniņš first album with the choir: Robert Schumann’s Missa sacra, recorded with organist Johan Hammarström.

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Klaus Mäkelä is Chief Conductor and Artistic Advisor of the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra. With Orchestre de Paris he assumed the role of Music Director in September 2021 and has been the orchestra’s Artistic Advisor since the start of the 2020/21 season. He is also Principal Guest Conductor of the Swedish Radio Symphony and Artistic Director of the Turku Music Festival. An exclusive Decca Classics Artist, Klaus Mäkelä has recorded the complete Sibelius Symphony cycle with the Oslo Philharmonic as his first project for the label, to be released in 2022.

Klaus Mäkelä launched the Oslo Philharmonic 2021/22 season in August with a special concert featuring Saariaho’s Asteroid 4179: Toutatis, Strauss Also sprach Zarathustra, two new works by Norwegian composer Mette Henriette and Sibelius Lemminkäinen. A similarly wide range of repertoire is presented throughout his second season in Oslo, including major choral works by Bach, Mozart and William Walton, Mahler Symphony No. 3 and Shostakovich Symphonies Nos. 10 and 14 with soloists Mika Kares and Asmik Grigorian. Recent and new works include compositions by Sally Beamish, Unsuk Chin, Jimmy Lopez, Andrew Norman and Kaija Saariaho. In Spring 2022 Klaus Mäkelä and the Oslo Philharmonic will perform the complete Sibelius Symphony cycle at the Wiener Konzerthaus and Hamburg Elbphilharmonie and give additional concerts at the Paris Philharmonie and London Barbican.

With Orchestre de Paris, Klaus Mäkelä performed at the summer festivals of Granada and Aix en Provence. For his first concert in the 2021/ 22 season he conducted a new work by Unsuk Chin entitled Spira, Richard Strauss Four Songs Op 27 with soloist Lise Davidsen and Mahler Symphony No. 1. His first season as Music Director also features the music of Ligeti and Dutilleux alongside Biber, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Rachmaninov and Stravinsky.

In the 2021/22 season Klaus Mäkelä appears as a Portrait Artist at the Wiener Konzerthaus conducting the Wiener Symphoniker and Oslo Philharmonic and playing cello in chamber music. He also guest conducts the Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Concertgebouworkest, London Philharmonic, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks and Münchner Philharmoniker. In summer 2022 he returns to the Verbier Festival to conduct the Verbier Festival and Verbier Festival Chamber orchestras as well as perform as a chamber musician. He also makes his first appearance at the Jurmala Festival in Riga with the Mariss Jansons Festival Orchestra.

In the 2020/21 season Klaus Mäkelä appeared with the Concertgebouworkest, Münchner Philharmoniker, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, NDR Elbphilharmonie, Orchestra del Maggio Musicale, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra and Tapiola Sinfonietta. As Artist in Residence at Spain’s Granada Festival he conducted the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Orquesta Ciudad de Granada and Orchestre de Paris. At the Verbier Festival he conducted and performed cello in a chamber music programme.

Mäkelä studied conducting at the Sibelius Academy with Jorma Panula and cello with Marko Ylönen, Timo Hanhinen and Hannu Kiiski. As a soloist, he has performed with several Finnish orchestras and as a chamber musician with members of the Oslo Philharmonic, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks and Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France.

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Chief conductor of the Jeune Choeur de Paris, he started a collaboration with the SWR Vokalensemble Stuttgart in 2013 (including a recording of Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé), and also works regularly with the Chœur de Radio-France and the Choeur Accentus since 2014, for tours, radio performances, recordings, preparations and A Cappella concerts. He collaborates with many personalities, such as Sir Simon Rattle, Gustavo Dudamel, Daniele Gatti, Louis Langrée, Stéphane Denève, Daniel Harding, Laurence Equilbey, L. G. Alarcon… He has also conducted the WDR Rundfunkchor in 2016. In July 2016, he has prepared both the SWR Vokalensemble Stuttgart and the NDR Chor for Berlioz’s Romeo et Juliette. In 2017, he has participate to the opening of the Seine Musical conducting the choir accentus and in 2018, he starts a collaboration with the Croatian Radio Choir. Korovitch works for many festivals: the Mozartwoche in Salzburg, Recontres Musicales d’Evian, the Festival de Radio-France in Montpellier or the festival Mozart in New York.

Concert length: 2 h 15 min incl. intermission