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THIS CONCERT HAS BEEN CANCELED - Mattei, Mäkelä & Mozart

This year’s edition of the Baltic Sea Festival has been cancelled. Read more at balticseafestival.com

Maurice Ravel wrote the suite Le Tombeau de Couperin on the eve of the 1920s, in memory of his friends who died in the First World War. Since Ravel believed that “the dead are sad enough, in their eternal silence”, the music is light and optimistic, just like the trio of Mozart arias that accompany the suite. Klaus Mäkelä also treats the audience to Sibelius’s two final, masterful symphonies.

Back in 1998, the Swedish baritone Peter Mattei had his international breakthrough in theatre legend Peter Brook’s production of Don Giovanni in Aix-en-Provence. He has since returned many times to the role as the young nobleman, including at the Metropolitan in New York. Peter Mattei has toured the world with other Mozart roles as well. Here, he will be performing arias from Cosí fan tutte, The Marriage of Figaro and the lesser-known opera La finta giardiniera in an entirely new context, as we alternate between them and Maurice Ravel’s four orchestrated movements from his piano suite Le Tombeau de Couperin. By switching between the arias and the dance pieces, Peter Mattei, frequently praised for his acting talent and stage presence, will have the opportunity to step into new roles.

In the midst of a raging world war, between 1914 and 1917, Ravel wrote Le Tombeau de Couperin, originally as six movements for piano, based on French Baroque dance suites. After a brief career as a driver in the military, he was discharged due to depression following the death his mother, but he dedicated the six movements to friends lost in the war. The piano suite premièred in April 1919 and was so successful that Ravel’s publisher asked for an orchestral version.

When he orchestrated four of the movements, he kept the ornate phrasing of the piano part. The work was premièred in this form by the Pasdeloup Orchestra in February 1920. In November of that year, the work was picked up by the Ballet Suédois, the experimental dance ensemble that was at the centre of Parisian cultural life between 1920 and 1925, with Théâtre des Champs-Elysées as their home stage.

In the 1920s, Jean Sibelius from Finland was considered the finest composer in the Nordic countries, next to Carl Nielsen from Denmark. He was also internationally successful, mainly in England and America. He often conducted his own works, frequently in Gothenburg where his friend and colleague Wilhelm Stenhammar was the orchestra’s artistic director. Sibelius also composed his subdued sixth symphony as a tribute to his friend. The symphony, completed in 1923 and premièred in Helsinki, has sometimes been called “the symphony of silence” and is the quietest of all his symphonies. It has a distinctive character with its hint of Dorian mode, possibly inspired by old Finnish folk melodies.

The seventh symphony is considerably clearer in its expression. Sibelius described the music as full of “the joy of life and vitality”. Initially, he had intended to write the piece in several movements but at the première, which he conducted himself, he called it “Fantasia Sinfonica” and it comprised one single movement. After the concert at Auditorium in Stockholm in March 1924, he wrote to his wife Aino: “Yesterday a concert with great success. My newest work is probably one of my best.” The following year, the score was published with the title Symphony No 7. With its exultant melodies, variation in themes, mood and form, as well as seamless changes in tempo, this work is usually considered the apogee of Sibelius’s symphonies. Klaus Mäkelä, who conducted the piece in his first performance with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra in 2017, describes it as “perhaps the world’s most perfect symphony”.

Text: Anna Hedelius


SWEDISH RADIO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA dot 2020/2021
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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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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.

In the winter of 2020, baritone Peter Mattei sang his first Wozzeck, the title role of Alban Berg’s opera, at the Metropolitan in New York. In January, 2020, he also performed Schubert’s Winterreise with pianist Lars-David Nilsson at Carnegie Hall in New York. Last season, the same duo went on an acclaimed Nordic concert tour with Winterreise, which led to an album recording as well as a TV version for SVT.

During 2020, Peter also appeared in the title role of Mozart’s Don Giovanni at both the Metropolitan, and at Wiener Staatsoper. The role gave him his international breakthrough in Peter Brooks’ production at Aix-en-Provence, and remains one of his favourite roles. He has since performed it at prominent venues, such as the Royal Swedish Opera, the Scottish Opera, the Opéra National de Paris, and the Teatro alla Scala.

Peter made a sensational debut performance as Amfortas in Wagner’s Parsifal at the Metropolitan in the spring of 2013. The following season, he saw yet another success as Wolfram in Tannhäuser at Staatsoper Berlin. Among his many other roles are the Count in Le Nozze di Figaro, the title role of Billy Budd, Don Fernando in Fidelio, and Pentheus in Daniel Börtz’ The Bacchae, directed by Ingmar Bergman at the Royal Swedish Opera.

Approximate concert length: 1 h 45 min (with intermission)