Author: avantiadmin

Avanti! will accompany the Canadian conductor, one of the top conductors in the film world, in the main screening of the Midnight Sun Film Festival in Sodankylä (14.-18.6.2017) on Friday 16 June (at 20:15). Gabriel Thibaudeaun under the direction of the fine music composed by by Rupert Julian for the film The Phantom of the Grand Opera (1925). Thousand faces Lon Chaney in the most famous of all classic melodrama film adaptations. The soprano solo, a special feature of the orchestration, is sung by Reetta Haavisto. Buy tickets for 25 € via this page.

This is one of the most beloved and iconic classics of silent cinema, where love turns to revenge and murderous hatred, and the real “beast” may well be the attitudes and prejudices of the dominant community. It is the mob that beats up the poor ghost and throws him into the river. The lynching mentality is the fate of the romantic, and some echoes of this may also have lived on in Lang’s M – The City Seeks a Murderer (1931), when Lorre, guilty of more serious crimes, was sentenced to death.

A thousand-faced virtuoso and specialist in horror roles, Lon Chaney (1883-1930) is startling in the most famous of classic horror-melodrama film adaptations as a maniacal, obsessive, faceless composer. Like the best monsters, Chaney’s unforgettable creation is also tragic, sensitive and moving, evoking pity as much as fear. What is ingenious, especially in the early part of the film, is the very sparing, almost foreplay-like teasing use of this, where the tension of the character’s entrance and the unmasking is played out at length. In a way, Chaney’s intensity already anticipates Brando’s electricity and every gesture, moment and scene in which he is present is pure magic.

Besides, the Paris Opera House is in itself the perfect setting for the film, with the Lumière brothers playing the whole thing in the neighbouring quarter in 1895 and everyone from Bogart to Hemingway and Rita Hayworth to James Bond sitting in Harry’s New York Bar next door.

Director Rupert Julian (1879-1943) was born in an exotic place like New Zealand and emigrated to the United States in 1911. His cinematic vision is at its strongest here, and the vertical dimension of the construction is particularly noteworthy, with the viewer sometimes high above the rooftops and the ghost seen sitting at the top of a tower, then descending into the labyrinths of the basement and the whirlpools of the underground river flowing beneath the opera house – and the only real difference between the two “Heaven and Hell” is the intervening field of dreams, the stage, where the freak composer has no official access, of course.

Julian’s bloody creation is so emotional that, despite its black and white, it conveys many other colours: red death, blue love and black current. The organ sounds its dirge and theatrical reels mingle with real-life masquerades in this moonlit tale in which – like in King Kong (1933) – the beauty finally slays the monster.
Text: Lauri Timonen

DIRECTOR: Rupert Julian
COUNTRY: USA/U.S.A.
YEAR: 1925
TIME: 1.35
LANGUAGES: en
SUBTITLE: The Phantom of the Opera
CATEGORY: Music, Silent movies with orchestra

Read more and buy tickets on the MSFF website >

Sat May 27th 2017 at 7 pm
Musiikkitalo, concert hall

Olari Elts, conductor
Karita Mattila, soprano

Karita Mattila was catapulted to international attention when she won the singing contest Cardiff Singer of the World in 1983. As chance would have it, Avanti! was founded the same year, and the paths of these two veritable phenomena of Finnish music have crossed later, too. In May, Mattila and Avanti! conducted by Olari Elts join forces in an end-of-season concert that will also see the premiere of a new orchestral work by composer Lauri Kilpiö. The piece has been commissioned by Pro Musica Foundation, which also supports the concert.

“The driving sonic forces of my upcoming orchestral piece are mostly timbres and textures, some of which are formed by noises of an indefinite pitch. Irrespective of this, my piece is not sound art but motive-driven music. What this means is that it is composed of a limited amount of musical entities that recur, develop, change and become juxtaposed in the course of the piece. Equally important to me is that my music has long arcs, intensity and moments of climax. Indeed, one could say that I aim at composing music that is symphonic in nature but without melodic themes.

Is my piece, then, a symphony? I do not know yet; we shall have to wait and see. But does this question even matter that much?” – Lauri Kilpiö.

The pieces to be performed by Mattila portray the feelings of love and longing in the lightness of spring. French composer Henri Duparc’s songs are filled with elegant saudade and sensuality. The damsel in Jean Sibelius’s song “Flickan kom ifrån sin älsklings möte” falls victim to an infidel lover. In Rydberg’s “På verandan vid havet” the pregnant silence expresses omnipresent longing, whereas in “Våren flyktar hastigt” by Runeberg the mere memory of spring encourages to love. Contentment of the heart, then again, shines through Robert Schumann’s symphony “Spring”: for the that time newly-wedded composer the season is swarming with signs of romance.

NOTE: The concert program has changed. The information is updated on Jan 23rd 2017.

PROGRAMME:

Lauri Kilpiö: new work

Henri Duparc:
L’invitation au voyage (Charles Baudelaire)
Chanson triste (Jean Lahore)
Phidylé (Leconte de Lisle)

Jean Sibelius:
På verandan vid havet op. 38/2 (Viktor Rydberg)
Flickan kom från sin älsklings mote op. 37/5 (Johan Ludvig Runeberg)
Våren flyktar hastigt op. 13/4 (Johan Ludvig Runeberg)

Robert Schumann: Symphony no 1 B flat major “Spring” Op. 38
Andante un poco maestoso – Allegro molto vivace
Larghetto
Scherzo (Molto vivace)
Allegro animato e grazioso

The concert is produced with the support of Pro Musica Foundation.

Tickets 59,00 – 22,50 € from www.ticketmaster.fi or 55 – 20 € from Musiikkitalo’s ticket office

Sat 27.5.2017 at 19
Music House, concert hall

Olari Elts, conductor
Karita Mattila, soprano

Karita Mattila shot to international fame after winning the Cardiff Song Contest in 1983, when Avanti! was also founded. The musical phenomena of the boom have crossed paths ever since. In May, Mattila and Avanti, led by Olari Elts, will join forces at Helsinki’s Helsinki Music Centre in a concert supported by the Pro Musica Foundation, premiering a new work for orchestra by Lauri Kilpiö, commissioned by the Foundation.

“The sonic characters in my upcoming orchestral piece are mainly sounds and textures, sometimes built up from non-compositional noise. However, my work is not sound art, but motivic music. This means that the piece is based on a limited set of recognisable and strong musical characters, which are repeated, developed, transformed and juxtaposed in different ways during the composition. I also want my music to be long, intense and, at certain key points, strongly culminating. These are all, in fact, symphonic qualities in music. So perhaps you could say that I try to make music that is symphonic in nature, without melodic themes.

Is my orchestral work a symphony then? I don’t know yet, maybe not, let’s see. But does this question really matter?”-Lauri Kilpiö

The concert opens with 4’33” by John Cage , considered a classic example of non-musical or conceptual music. After the premiere, the concert continues with songs by the luminous soprano Karita Mattila, which play on the many notes of love: longing, betrayal, romance and happiness. French singer Henri Duparc’s songs are distinguished by a subtle longing and sensuality. Sibelius and Runeberg glorify young love in the song Flickan kom ifrån sin älsklings möte, in which a girl is betrayed. In the Rydberg song På verandan vid havet, the tense silence expresses a yearning for eternity, while in the Runeberg song Våren flyktar hastigt, the mere memory of spring encourages love.

Relationship bliss can also be heard in Robert Schumann’s concluding four-movement symphony “Spring”, in which the newly married composer finds romantic omens in the season.

NOTE! The concert programme has changed, the information has been updated on 23.1. and 12.4.

PROGRAMME:

John Cage: 4’33”

Lauri Kilpiö: new work

Henri Duparc:
L’invitation au voyage (Charles Baudelaire)
Chanson triste (Jean Lahore)
Phidylé (Leconte de Lisle)

Jean Sibelius:
På verandan vid havet op. 38/2 (Viktor Rydberg)
Flickan kom från sin älsklings mote op. 37/5 (Johan Ludvig Runeberg)
Våren flyktar hastigt op. 13/4 (Johan Ludvig Runeberg)

Robert Schumann: Symphony No 1 in B flat major op. 38, “Spring”
Andante un poco maestoso – Allegro molto vivace
Larghetto
Scherzo (Molto vivace)
Allegro animato e grazioso

The concert is supported by the Pro Musica Foundation.

Tickets including delivery costs 59,00 – 22,50 € www.ticketmaster.fi or 55 – 20 € at the Musiikkitalo ticket office.

Fantastic music and a powerful stage production!

Opera Society Taite ry and Chamber Orchestra Avanti! will bring two short operas composed by Väinö Raition to the stage of the National Opera’s Alminsal: The Proposal of Väinämöinen from 1934-1936 will be performed for the first time in orchestrated form and The King of Lydia is a domestic operatic curiosity from 1937. Also included are excerpts fromRaition’s Asaria and Kruununha’s Syrup Factory.The music is fantastic and the staging is powerful.

The roles are played by e.g.

Annami Hylkilä, soprano
Juha Hostikka, baritone
Markus Nieminen, baritone
Ilkka Hämäläinen, tenor
Anu Hostikka, soprano
Tanja Kauppinen-Savijoki, soprano
Riikka Rantanen, mezzo-soprano

Performances at the Alminsal of the Finnish National Opera 29.9., 30.9. and 1.10.2017.
Fri 29.9.2017 at 18:00, premiere Buy tickets here
Sat 30.9.2017 at 18:00 Buy tickets here
Su 1.10.2017 at 15:00 Buy tickets here
Total duration approx. 1 h, no intermission
Normal price 36 €, pensioners 32 €, unemployed and students 18 €, prices include delivery charges. Buy tickets here

Music by Väinö Raitio
Text by Eino Leino
Music Direction by Tuomas Hannikainen
Direction by Johanna Freundlich
Set and costumes by Mark Väisänen
taite.fi
#neijonnälkä

Painting: light shades, detail, 2013, Urho Kähkönen

Avanti! has been a pioneer of new trends in Finnish music for more than three decades. In their PianoEspoo concert, the orchestra will premiere Sampo Haapamäki’s new concerto for quarter piano and Jukka Tiensuu’s recorder concerto. The soloists will be Eero Saunamäki, a keyboardist, and Elisa Järvi, a pianist who has been working with Haapamäki for years to develop the fourth string piano to provide a way for the composer’s increasingly varied chordal visions on keyboard.

SOURCE:
Charles De Lusse: Air à la Grecque (1760)
Jukka Tiensuu: Concerto for recorder n.s.
Sampo Haapamäki: Piano concerto for four movements n.s.

The concert is part of the PianoEspoo programme from 3 to 19 November 2017.

Tickets from Lippupiste, prices include delivery charges:
Normal price 33,50 €
Pensioners 27,50 €
Students, unemployed, conscripts, children 17,50 €
Buy tickets here

Elisa Järvi
Elisa Järvi, a pianist from Espoo, Finland, graduated as a Doctor of Music from the DocMus Artist Training Centre at Sibelius Academy in 2011. Her piano teachers include Margit Rahkonen, Hui-Ying Tawaststjerna, Konstantin Bogino, Juhani Lagerspetz and Karin Merle. Järvi has immersed himself in new music performance practices through courses at the Cologne Music Academy and the Darmstadt and Acanthes Summer Academies. He has also played electroacoustic music and various keyboard instruments from celesta to disc piano. Elisa Järvi has worked with numerous Finnish and foreign contemporary composers, premiered and recorded works. Together with the composer Sampo Haapamäki, she has been developing a new four-part piano keyboard. The instrument has already been used twice in concerts by MikroEnsemble, a seven-piece ensemble specialising in microtonal music.

Eero Saunamäki
Eero Saunamäki studied recorder and saxophone at the Sibelius Academy and graduated with A-levels in both instruments in 2010. Saunamäki has been the most active commissioner and premiere performer of new recorder music in Finland in recent years: he has premiered more than 20 contemporary works for recorder by Finnish and foreign composers, organised recorder concerts, participated in improvisational and cross-artistic productions and as a soloist in orchestras. Saunamäki works as a special woodwind player in the Guards Band, as a teacher at the Sibelius Academy, as a freelance musician and as a musician in light music ensembles. Saunamäki is also a founding member and chairman of the Finnish Recorder Society. He received grants for commissioning a recorder concerto from the Finnish Cultural Foundation, the Wihuri Foundation and the Rutzy Foundation.

Avanti! received a grant from the Finnish Composers “Sibelius Foundation, supported by the Finnish Cultural Foundation, to commission a composition by Sampo Haapamäki. The Sibelius Followers grants were awarded to member orchestras of the Finnish Symphony Orchestras Association who commissioned works from members of the Finnish Composers” Association. All works will be premiered during the 100th anniversary of Finland’s independence.