The futuristic tone poem gained strength from the sophisticated lighting design at the concert of the Helsinki City Orchestra.
Classic
Helsinki City Orchestra at Musiikkitalo 20.3. Jukka-Pekka Saraste, conductor, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, piano. – Scriabin, Bruckner.
Light show is often an integral part of rock and pop concerts and videos. There is nothing to prevent using lights to increase the effect of music in symphony concerts as well – as has been done from time to time.
Jukka-Pekka Saraste started by leading HKO's concert by Alexander Scriabin of a messianic-futuristic work Prométhée ou le Poème du feu (1910). Scriabin was a synesthete who saw certain chords as a certain color.
The poem of fire for the performances, Skrjabin had a color organ built, where different colored light bulbs corresponded to the different tones of the piece. The experiment did not work as the composer had hoped.
Modern light technology works great instead. Valo Virtanen had planned To Prometheus the sophisticated lights that condensed the atmosphere of Scriabin's furiously effervescent work in the darkened hall.
At first a beautiful red light spread in the hall as a symbol of fire. The lighting changed softly to blue, purple, pink and other shades.
When Prometheus brings light to humanity at the stunning end of the work, the darkness receded and a bright light spread into the hall. It was a great wow effect.
Although I come in poetry the piano plays an important role, however, it is not an actual piano concerto, rather the piano is one instrument in a symphonic collective.
Great power the piano part required a Frenchman From Jean-Yves Thibaudet. He banged out solid, piercing chords of the massive orchestration and rose to a virtuosic blaze in the final euphoria.
Led by Saraste of Prometheus from the mystical initial chord built up in fourths grew a glorious roaring melodic flow, in which mysterious chromatic timbres swelled and subsided and fluttered feverishly.
Two weeks ago, Saraste led by Anton Bruckner of the 80-minute eighth symphony. Now it was the turn of Bruckner's last, ninth symphony in D minor (1896) that missed the finale, which lasts just under an hour.
Eighth Symphony was, in my opinion, a more charged and tense performance than the ninth one. Saraste built the Ninth in his familiar style with a calm architecture, and outlined the monumental shape of the parts and the radiating organ-like sound blocks firmly and clearly.
An excellent example of Saraste's leadership skills was, for example, the beginning of the first part, where loose motive particles emerged from emptiness and chaos. Saraste held the pieces together and anticipated the first big symphonic arches and climbs.
Ninth Symphony wavers on the borders of tonality and future atonality. Dramatic sounds of danger and destruction can also be heard in it. Saraste, however, emphasized the traditional, safe aspects of the symphony.
The shocking Scherzo has sometimes sounded like a brutal and wild horror of the machine age. Now it was rather fun and playful.
The last movement of the ninth, the half-hour long Adagio is, in Bruckner's words, “farewell to life”. The longing for happiness and redeeming light rang out in its calmly beautifully singing, nuanced melodic flow, where even the gnawing pain felt comforting.
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