THE TURKU ENSEMBLE

The Turku Ensemble chamber music association began life in 1984 when a group of players in Turku decided to make music together on a regular basis. Their aim was to produce wide-ranging chamber music of a high standard. Right from the start they have also sought to combine different instruments and instrumental groups in varied and colourful ways. The twenty or so members of the Turku Ensemble are mostly teachers at the Turku Music Academy and Conservatoire and players in the Turku Philharmonic Orchestra.

Music-making among friends produces the finest chamber music. This intimate principle has resulted in not only traditional concerts but also many crossover and happening-type productions with, for example, the Aurinkobaletti dance company, the Swedish Theatre in Turku, the Turku Art Museum and many other local culture producers. A flexible line-up, the Turku Ensemble has also sought to expand the concert institution by taking chamber music out to unconventional venues, to make it accessible to people not already familiar with the genre. The repertoire is varied, ranging from early Renaissance music to new commissions, performed by anything from a solo instrument to a chamber orchestra.

Outside Finland the Turku Ensemble has performed in Sweden, Russia, the Czech Republic and the United States. Its previous disc was devoted to music by Arvo Pärt, Aarre Merikanto, Bernard Henrik Crusell and Einar Englund.

Musicians

A. Merikanto: Pianotrio a minor (1917)
Juha-Pekka Vikman, violin; 1. Concertmaster, Turku Philharmonic Orchestra
Jukka Perksalo, violoncello; Lector, Turku Conservatory
Mikael Kemppainen, piano; Lector, Turku Conservatory

J. Sibelius: En Saga Septet
Ilari Lehtinen, flute; prinsipal, Turku Philharmonic Orchestra
Taito Perunka, clarinet; prinsipal, Turku Philharmonic Orchestra
Ilana Gothoni, 1. violin; prinsipal, Turku Philharmonic Orchestra
Juha-Pekka Vikman, 2. violin ; 1. concertmaster, Turku Philharmonic Orchestra
Harri Sippel, viola; senior lector, Turku Music Academy
Katja Kolehmainen, violoncello; player, Turku Philharmonic Orchestra
Mikko Multamäki, double bass; prinsipal, Turku Philharmonic Orchestra

S. Fagerlund: Imaginary Landscapes
Conductor: Pertti Pekkanen
Juha-Pekka Vikman, 1. violin; 1. concertmaster, Turku Philharmonic Orchestra
Ilana Gothoni, 2. violin ; prinsipal, Turku Philharmonic Orchestra
Juhani Forsman, viola; assitanprinsipal, Turku Philharmonic Orchestra
Andreas Helling, violoncello; prinsipal, Turku Philharmonic Orchestra
Mikko Multamäki, double bass; prinsipal, Turku Philharmonic Orchestra
Anne Eirola, flute; assitanprinsipal, Turku Philharmonic Orchestra
Satu Ala, oboe; assitanprinsipal, Turku Philharmonic Orchestra
Tapio Liukkonen, clarinet; assitanprinsipal, Turku Philharmonic Orchestra
Liisa Malmivaara, piano; lector, Turku Conservatory

J-P. Lehto: Quintet for Windplayers
Anne Eirola, flute; assitanprinsipal, Turku Philharmonic Orchestra
Satu Ala, oboe; assitanprinsipal, Turku Philharmonic Orchestra
Jarmo Korhonen, bassoon; prinsipal, Turku Philharmonic Orchestra
Tapio Liukkonen, clarinet; assitanprinsipal, Turku Philharmonic Orchestra
 Tanja Nisonen, French horn; assitanprinsipal, Turku Philharmonic Orchestra

 

Imaginary Landscapes

 Aarre Merikanto: Piano Trio (1917)

Aarre Merikanto (1893-1958) was born into an atmosphere conducive to composition, though his father, the great Finnish melodist Oskar Merikanto, is unlikely to have provided the stimulus for expressionist – or indeed any modernist – style. His home did, however, instil in him a professional ambition that was further fanned by his studies with Max Reger in Leipzig and Sergei Vasilenko in Moscow.

Merikanto thanked Reger for his chamber music exercises in particular, and his Piano Trio in A minor was probably conceived in Leipzig under the influence of the famous contrapuntist. It is dated Janakkala, summer 1917.

Three concerts of his works in 1914, 1917 and 1918 made Merikanto the hottest name in the young generation of Finnish composers, and it is difficult to understand why he did not allow his late Romantic Piano Trio to be performed at this period in time. In a letter to Sulho Ranta in 1929 he mentions it among his unperformed works, which proves that he at least considered it a piece of full artistic merit. In any case the Trio was not given its first performance until the 1930s, after which it was forgotten and the material lost.

Fifty years later scholars once again began tracking down scores by Merikanto either lost or destroyed by him. Groundbreaking work was carried out by a pupil of his, the composer Paavo Heininen, who in 1982 completed the Symphonic Study and later some other works. Heininen’s incentive to embark on this project was the exhaustive biography of Aarre Merikanto published by Seppo Heikinheimo in 1985.

The unearthing of the Piano Trio was the outcome of both detective work and a stroke of luck. In the 1930s a certain Helsinki restaurant, the Musta Karhu, became known for its right-wing nationalist sympathies and its music. After the war it not unexpectedly closed and its extensive music library was relegated to an attic. Decades later this music was discovered by an insurance clerk with an interest in music. His first step was to contact Ari Hakulinen, then Chairman of the Turku Musicians’ Association, who arranged for the music to be sent to Turku. Sifting through the pile took time, until in 1987 the Turku Ensemble came across an authentic Aarre Merikanto manuscript for the Piano Trio in A minor of 1917, dedicated to cellist Sakari Heikinheimo. The inscription on the last page of the score confirmed the Trio’s first and only hearing: “First performed by the Finnish Broadcasting Company on June 6, 1937. Messrs Heikinheimo, Haipus and Wikberg.”

The Turku Ensemble gave the work its second performance at the Turku Festival in 1988, in which year it was also recorded by the Finnish Broadcasting Company.

Antti Häyrynen

Jean Sibelius: En Saga, Op. 9

The initial motifs for the tone poem En Saga would appear to have presented themselves to Jean Sibelius in spring 1891, while he was studying instrumentation with Karl Goldmark in Vienna. He said he was working on a Septet for flute, clarinet and strings the themes of which were assumed by his biographer Erik Tawaststjerna to be among those of En Saga. The music of the Septet has never been found and the En Saga Septet discovered and arranged by Gregory Barrett is apparently based on the composer’s later sketches. Barrett’s arrangement is according to the first version of En Saga premiered in Helsinki in1893 with Sibelius himself conducting.

In 1902 Ferruccio Busoni invited Sibelius to Berlin to present some of his music. For this occasion Sibelius adapted the score of En Saga, cutting it down to 18 instead of 22 minutes. This version was premiered in Helsinki in November that year with Robert Kajanus conducting, just before Sibelius’s departure for Berlin. It was published within a year and first recorded in England by the New Symphony Orchestra conducted by Eugene Goossens in 1930. Not until the 1990s did the search begin for the original version, which was recorded by the Lahti Symphony Orchestra under Osmo Vänskä in 1996. The later version is an extremely popular item in the orchestral repertoire; the Turku Philharmonic Orchestra, for example, has so far performed it no fewer than 83 times (!) – the earliest with Sibelius as the conductor.

Woven into Sibelius’s early works are often personal sentimental memories. Does this apply to En Saga? Sibelius once said: “En Saga is psychologically one of my profoundest works. I could almost say that the whole of my youth is contained within it. It is an expression of a state of mind. While I was writing it, I had many upsetting experiences. In no other work have I revealed myself so completely as in En Saga. For this reason alone any interpretation of it is, of course, completely foreign to my way of thinking.” Some have seen it as being an exponent of Jugend style in Finnish music, its psychological state of mind combining elements of symbolism, Karelianism and Jugend.

The scores of En Saga are extremely interesting, because they permit analysis of the decisions arrived at by the young Sibelius, still a student of orchestration. During the period between the two versions he composed various sets of incidental music for orchestra (the Karelia, King Christian II and Lemminkäinen suites) and works for choir and orchestra. He completed his first Symphony in 1900, just before the second version of En Saga. Comparison of the two versions thus reveals the progress and the growing richness of his orchestration technique. Hearing the performance of the first version of En Saga and that the earlier Septet had been lost presumably inspired Gregory Barrett to make his reconstruction: the 1893 version for the same instruments as the Septet of 1891. The music is that of the tone poem but lacks the strong dynamic brass and percussion build-ups. Some of the sudden modulations and transitions are, on the other hand, more striking when performed by a septet than by an orchestra. The Septet also makes the intimate aspects of the work sound more personal and more heart-rending.

Ilari Lehtinen

Sebastian Fagerlund: Imaginary Landscapes (2002)

Imaginary Landscapes could be described as a series of “musical glimpses” that together form an organic structure. The opening sequence presents slow melodic material. This is contrasted with fast ostinato rhythms and arpeggios that, like the melodic material, act as independent elements throughout the piece. Though the materials undergo several metamorphoses, they are not in a process of continuous development. The music often returns to the original materials but each time presents them as if in a different light. The work was commissioned by the Uusinta Chamber Orchestra and premiered in Helsinki in 2002.

Sebastian Fagerlund

Sebastian Fagerlund: Emanations (1998)
Emanations is a fitting title for the music of Sebastian Fagerlund (b. 1972) in general and one of his earliest works, for clarinet, percussion and string orchestra. The name does, however, express his stylistic strivings as a whole, since most of his works subscribe to the idea of vibrant, logical flow.

Fagerlund had just begun studying composition with Erkki Jokinen at the Sibelius Academy, from which he duly graduated in 2004, when he wrote Emanations. Before that he had studied the violin at the Turku Conservatoire and spent the 1996-97 academic year in Utrecht as a composition pupil of Ton Lambij. He also attended a number of composition masterclasses. His output includes works in a number of genres: orchestral, chamber, solo, vocal and electronic.

His violinist background is possibly reflected in the expressive instrumental approach characteristic of Fagerlund’s music. He has so far not made any radical changes of stylistic direction. His works – a ways resonant, colourful and polished – are dominated by rich-sounding, swiftly-flowing music and intricate textures while avoiding modernist severity. The rhythms are highly varied, at times clearly motor-like, at others whimsically syncopated or more freely outlined, and in places the textures tend towards aleatoric counterpoint. The fast flow and rhythmic vitality are often counterbalanced by fragile, lyrically delicate episodes, and this very shifting between movement and stagnation is one of the main features of his music.

Kimmo Korhonen

Jukka-Pekka Lehto: Quintet (2001)

Not until the mid-1990s did Jukka-Pekka Lehto (b. 1958) seriously begin composing, in other words relatively late in life. Before that he had been employed in a number of musical capacities and had written small-scale arrangements and compositions, chiefly for amateur bands. In time he nevertheless became known primarily as a flautist; he has been principal flautist in the Pori Sinfonietta since 1987 and has visited many parts of Europe and the United States as a coach, soloist and chamber musician.

Lehto began his musical career in the Navy Band in Turku. This maybe partly explains his focus on music for winds, though works by him for symphony orchestra and string ensemble have been heard more and more often both in Finland and abroad in recent years.

As a composer Lehto does not regard himself as an innovator or a pioneer, preferring to draw on a wide range of traditions. His style could well be called fusion; elements of light music are often present. In his own words, the salient feature of his works is ‘lehtonality’ (Lehto/tonality = lehtonality), exploring the territory somewhere between tonality and atonality.

A member of the Society of Finnish Composers since 1999, Jukka-Pekka Lehto has been awarded several major grants and leaves of absence in order to concentrate on composition, as in the 2008/09 season.

Says Jukka-Pekka Lehto: “The Quintet was commissioned by the Turku Ensemble and was, with the exception of one player, premiered by the quintet on this disc. I had got to know the players long before the commission, and I hope I can even call them friends. For me as a composer this is the perfect situation. I can picture all the players and their instruments: their image is somehow present in the composition process.

“The Quintet owes much to such 20th century French composers as Ibert, Poulenc, Françaix and Bozza. The wind quintet became established as an ensemble at the turn of the 20th century. Franz Danzi and Anton Reicha were the first notable composers of wind quintets. The latter taught counterpoint at the Paris Conservatoire in the early decades of the 19th century and while there composed a collection of large wind quintets – among the very first in this genre and on this scale. Danzi and Reicha undoubtedly influenced the other composers I have just mentioned, also known for their virtuosic quintets. And the same names are, of course, sacred to all the world’s flautists, as representatives of the last clearly nationalist music for the flute.

“The movements of the Quintet nevertheless have Italian names. Racconto, Story, begins with machine-like, jerky music before the low-register instruments embark on the musical story. As the movement proceeds, the singing and jerky music set up in opposition.

“The Sarabande evokes reminiscence, often in wistful mood. The melody proclaimed at the end by the French horn to the accompaniment of a sentimental chord sequence is a sort of personal memory for me of the days when I composed very light music.

“The Intermezzo is based on a quick four-note motif that recurs throughout the movement in different contexts. It is indeed only an interlude, having no great musical function.

“The Divertimento aims, as its name suggests, to entertain. After a slow introduction the complicated but swinging rhythms try to coax the listener along. Of all the movements, this one possibly alludes most to its French models in its overall ambiance. Towards the end is a slow episode in which the woodwinds rise in chords to an inhumanly high register, as if defying the laws of nature. Having thus momentarily tormented the listener, the Quintet ends with a quick, rhythmic coda.

Jukka-Pekka Lehto

English translations Susan Sinisalo