Digital Programmes
Oslo Philharmonic/Klaus Mäkelä with Lise Davidsen
Start time: 7.30pm
Approximate end time: 9.30pm, including a 20-minute interval
Please note all timings are approximate and subject to change
Jessica Duchen explores the music that marks the Oslo Philharmonic's first live London performance under the baton of Klaus Mäkelä.
Beethoven, Schubert, Bruckner and Dvorák each left no more than nine symphonies. In this light, Gustav Mahler’s superstition about reaching this number himself is understandable. It also proved prophetic. His Symphony No 9 was indeed the last he completed; the surviving Adagio from his intended Symphony No 10 remains a tantalising glimpse of a future unfulfilled.
This music is deeply personal, associated with the crisis Mahler suffered in 1910 on learning of his wife Alma’s affair with the architect Walter Gropius. It led him to consult Sigmund Freud, who later wrote of their ‘highly interesting expeditions through [Mahler’s] life history’; but alongside psychoanalysis, the composer began a new symphony, annotating its manuscript with verbal outbursts about Alma: ‘Madness, seize me, the accursed! Negate me, so I forget that I exist, that I may cease to be!’; ‘To live for you! To die for you!’; and a tender diminutive, ‘Almschi’.
The Symphony No 10 was unfinished upon Mahler’s death in 1911; 13 years later, Alma asked her daughter’s husband, Ernst Krenek, to complete it from the sketches. His version of the Adagio and the Purgatorio (the third movement) was premiered that year, but it is the 1964 critical Mahler edition’s Adagio that has survived long term.
The extended movement is warm-hearted yet tragic; the music builds through the interrogation of its ideas until a giant climax implodes in a vast outburst of anguish. The final pages can seem nothing less than the last breath of romanticism fading into the unknown.
Alban Berg enjoyed a privileged Viennese childhood, beginning to compose aged 16. Then, in quick succession, his father died, he failed his exams and a love affair collapsed. After a suicide attempt, he became an apprentice accountant in an Austrian government ministry.
On the side, he composed a copious quantity of songs, plus vocal ensembles which he sang with his brother and sister. In 1904, spotting a newspaper advert for composition lessons with Arnold Schoenberg, Berg’s siblings showed their brother’s manuscripts to the celebrated modernist, who agreed to teach him without a fee. His studies with Schoenberg continued for five years, but the two remained close friends and colleagues for the rest of Berg’s short life.
In 1928 Berg chose seven of his songs (out of more than 100) for revision, orchestration and publication. The premiere on 6 November was the first formal hearing of pieces written some two decades earlier, although ‘Die Nachtigall’, ‘Traumgekrönt’ and ‘Liebesode’ had been performed in 1907 at a concert of works by Schoenberg’s pupils.
Each sets a text by a different poet, but they share the emotional intensity and extended harmonic language that Berg inherited from influences such as Richard Strauss’s Salome and Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht. The music is poised at the tipping point from which romanticism spilled over towards modernism. Berg responds with hypersensitive care to the poems, whether glancing back in time in ‘Schilflied’ (Nicolas Lenau) and the Brahmsian ‘Die Nachtigall’ (Theodor Storm), tackling edgier eroticism in the first song, ‘Nacht’ (Carl Hauptmann) or creating a delicate, malleable fabric for ‘Traumgekrönt’ (Rainer Maria Rilke). The set tells us much about where Berg came from – and something, too, of where he would go next.
‘Today at ten to eleven I saw sixteen swans. One of my greatest experiences. Lord God, that beauty!’ It was 21 April 1915; Jean Sibelius was working on the first draft of his Fifth Symphony. The flight of swans left its mark on the finale, a sonic realisation of the sense of wonder that nature inspired in Finland’s greatest composer.
The Finnish government had commissioned the symphony in honour of Sibelius’s 50th birthday; such was his national stature that it had been declared a holiday. On the appointed evening, the composer duly conducted the world premiere of its original version.
Nevertheless, this was not the end of the journey. It was six years before Sibelius was content with the symphony in its final form. World events were impacting heavily on him, as on everybody; World War I was raging through Europe and in 1917 Finland was fighting Russia, after declaring independence. The Sibelius family spent much of 1918 in Helsinki for safety, their house, Ainola, having been searched twice by Red Guard soldiers; but once they could return, the intensely self-critical composer revised the Fifth Symphony for the third time. He described the result as ‘practically composed anew.’
The Tempo molto moderato builds up from fragmentary ideas, beginning with a horn-call motif and gradually extending and crystallising. The movement contrasts hinted ideas and a sense of harmonic instability with bolder, more strongly rooted statements and at one point makes a startling breakthrough as if from darkness into light, reflecting the combination of two movements in the original draft, including a scherzo, into one. Finally the ideas come together and find agreement, sweeping forward to a triumphant close.
In the Andante mosso, pizzicato strings and staccato flutes present a rhythmically distinctive theme while woodwind and horns offer a sustained counter-idea. A series of variants explore and experiment gently with these contrasts.
A rustle of tremolando builds anticipation as the finale begins, before the horns break into their moment of glory in the ‘swan’ theme; alongside it, a countermelody in woodwind and cellos soars forth, the music taking the sky with a striking switch of key. A slowing of pace in the final pages leads to a deceptively timed conclusion in six giant, affirmative chords.
© Jessica Duchen
Start time: 7.30pm
Approximate end time: 9.30pm, including a 20-minute interval
Please note all timings are approximate and subject to change
Programme and performers
Gustav Mahler 'Adagio' from Symphony No 10
Alban Berg Seven Early Songs
1. Nacht (Night)
2. Schilflied (Reed song)
3. Die Nachtigall (The nightingale)
4. Traumgekrönt (Crowned with dreams)
5. Im Zimmer (In the room)
6. Liebesode (Ode to love)
7. Sommertage (Summer days)
Jean Sibelius Symphony No 5
1. Tempo molto moderato
2. Andante mosso, quasi allegretto
3. Allegro molto
Performers
Oslo Philharmonic
Klaus Mäkelä conductor
Lise Davidsen soprano
Translations
Dämmern Wolken über Nacht und Tal.
Nebel schweben. Wasser rauschen sacht.
Nun entschleiert sich’s mit einem Mal.
O gib acht! gib acht!
Weites Wunderland ist aufgetan,
Silbern ragen Berge traumhaft groß,
Stille Pfade silberlicht talan
Aus verborg’nem Schoß.
Und die hehre Welt so traumhaft rein.
Stummer Buchenbaum am Wege steht
Schattenschwarz – ein Hauch vom fernen Hain
Einsam leise weht.
Und aus tiefen Grundes Düsterheit
Blinken Lichter auf in stummer Nacht.
Trinke Seele! trinke Einsamkeit!
O gib acht! gib acht!
Text by Carl Hauptmann
Clouds loom over night and valley.
Mists hover, waters softly murmur.
Now at once all is unveiled.
O take heed! take heed!
A vast wonderland opens up,
Silvery mountains soar dreamlike tall,
Silent paths climb silver-bright valleywards
From a hidden womb.
And the glorious world so dreamlike pure.
A silent beech-tree stands by the wayside
Shadow-black – a breath from the distant grove
Blows solitary soft.
And from the deep valley’s gloom
Lights twinkle in the silent night.
Drink soul! drink solitude!
O take heed! take heed!
Translations by Richard Stokes © author of The Book of Lieder (Faber, 2005) and The Complete Songs of Hugo Wolf (Faber, 2021)
Provided via Oxford Lieder (www.oxfordlieder.co.uk)
Auf geheimem Waldespfade
Schleich’ ich gern im Abendschein
An das öde Schilfgestade,
Mädchen, und gedenke dein!
Wenn sich dann der Busch verdüstert,
Rauscht das Rohr geheimnisvoll,
Und es klaget und es flüstert,
Daß ich weinen, weinen soll.
Und ich mein’, ich höre wehen
Leise deiner Stimme Klang,
Und im Weiher untergehen
Deinen lieblichen Gesang.
Text by Nikolaus Lenau
Along a secret forest path
I love to steal in the evening light
To the desolate reedy shore
And think, my girl, of you!
When the bushes then grow dark,
The reeds pipe mysteriously,
Lamenting and whispering,
That I must weep, must weep.
And I seem to hear the soft sound
Of your voice,
And your lovely singing
Drowning in the pond.
Translations by Richard Stokes © author of The Book of Lieder (Faber, 2005) and The Complete Songs of Hugo Wolf (Faber, 2021)
Provided via Oxford Lieder (www.oxfordlieder.co.uk)
Das macht, es hat die Nachtigall
Die ganze Nacht gesungen;
Da sind von ihrem süssen Schall,
Da sind in Hall und Widerhall
Die Rosen aufgesprungen.
Sie war doch sonst ein wildes Blut,
Nun geht sie tief in Sinnen;
Trägt in der Hand den Sommerhut
Und duldet still der Sonne Glut
Und weiß nicht, was beginnen.
Das macht, es hat die Nachtigall
Die ganze Nacht gesungen;
Da sind von ihrem süssen Schall,
Da sind in Hall und Widerhall
Die Rosen aufgesprungen.
Text by Theodor Storm
It is because the nightingale
Has sung throughout the night,
That from the sweet sound
Of her echoing song
The roses have sprung up.
She was once a wild creature,
Now she wanders deep in thought;
In her hand a summer hat,
Bearing in silence the sun’s heat,
Not knowing what to do.
It is because the nightingale
Has sung throughout the night,
That from the sweet sound
Of her echoing song
The roses have sprung up.
Translations by Richard Stokes © author of The Book of Lieder (Faber, 2005) and The Complete Songs of Hugo Wolf (Faber, 2021)
Provided via Oxford Lieder (www.oxfordlieder.co.uk)
Das war der Tag der weißen Chrysanthemen, –
mir bangte fast vor seiner Pracht …
Und dann, dann kamst du mir die Seele nehmen
tief in der Nacht.
Mir war so bang, und du kamst lieb und leise, –
ich hatte grad im Traum an dich gedacht.
Du kamst, und leis wie eine Märchenweise
erklang die Nacht …
Text by Rainer Maria Rilke
That was the day of the white chrysanthemums –
Its brilliance almost frightened me ...
And then, then you came to take my soul
at the dead of night.
I was so frightened, and you came sweetly and gently,
I had been thinking of you in my dreams.
You came, and soft as a fairy tune
the night rang out …
Translations by Richard Stokes © author of The Book of Lieder (Faber, 2005) and The Complete Songs of Hugo Wolf (Faber, 2021)
Provided via Oxford Lieder (www.oxfordlieder.co.uk)
Herbstsonnenschein.
Der liebe Abend blickt so still herein.
Ein Feuerlein rot
Knistert im Ofenloch und loht.
So! – Mein Kopf auf deinen Knie’n. –
So ist mir gut;
Wenn mein Auge so in deinem ruht.
Wie leise die Minuten ziehn! …
Text by Johannes Schlaf
Autumn sunshine.
The lovely evening looks in so silently.
A little red fire
Crackles and blazes in the hearth.
Like this! – With my head on your knees. –
Like this I am content;
When my eyes rest in yours like this.
How gently the minutes pass!
Translations by Richard Stokes © author of The Book of Lieder (Faber, 2005) and The Complete Songs of Hugo Wolf (Faber, 2021)
Provided via Oxford Lieder (www.oxfordlieder.co.uk)
Im Arm der Liebe schliefen wir selig ein.
Am offnen Fenster lauschte der Sommerwind,
und unsrer Atemzüge Frieden
trug er hinaus in die helle Mondnacht. –
Und aus dem Garten tastete zagend sich
Ein Rosenduft an unserer Liebe Bett
Und gab uns wundervolle Träume,
Träume des Rausches – so reich an Sehnsucht!
Text by Otto Erich Hartleben
In love’s arms we fell blissfully asleep.
The summer wind listened at the open window,
and carried the peace of our breathing
out into the moon-bright night. –
And from the garden a scent of roses
came timidly to our bed of love
and gave us wonderful dreams,
ecstatic dreams – so rich in longing!
Translations by Richard Stokes © author of The Book of Lieder (Faber, 2005) and The Complete Songs of Hugo Wolf (Faber, 2021)
Provided via Oxford Lieder (www.oxfordlieder.co.uk)
Nun ziehen Tage über die Welt,
gesandt aus blauer Ewigkeit,
im Sommerwind verweht die Zeit.
Nun windet nächtens der Herr
Sternenkränze mit seliger Hand
über Wander- und Wunderland.
O Herz, was kann in diesen Tagen
dein hellstes Wanderlied denn sagen
von deiner tiefen, tiefen Lust:
Im Wiesensang verstummt die Brust,
nun schweigt das Wort, wo Bild um Bild
zu dir zieht und dich ganz erfüllt.
Text by Paul Hohenberg
Days, sent from blue eternity,
journey now across the world,
time drifts away in the summer wind.
The Lord at night now garlands
star-chains with his blessed hand
across lands of wandering and wonder.
In these days, O heart, what can
your brightest travel-song say
of your deep, deep joy?
The heart falls silent in the meadows’ song,
words now cease when image after image
comes to you and fills you utterly.
Translations by Richard Stokes © author of The Book of Lieder (Faber, 2005) and The Complete Songs of Hugo Wolf (Faber, 2021)
Provided via Oxford Lieder (www.oxfordlieder.co.uk)
Artist biographies
In August 2020 the orchestra launched its 101st season with new Chief Conductor and Artistic Advisor, Klaus Mäkelä, whose close rapport with the musicians was immediately evident at his Oslo debut two years previously. For their first project together, they recorded the complete Sibelius cycle, released on Decca Classics to international acclaim – the BBC Music Magazine named it Recording of the Month and described the album as an 'electrifying triumph'.
On September 27 1919, the Orchestra of the Philharmonic Company – later to be known as the Oslo Philharmonic − took to the stage for its first public concert. The Oslo Philharmonic quickly became a powerhouse in the capital's music scene, attracting both international stars and a large local audience. In 1921, Jean Sibelius conducted a series of concerts with his own works.
In the century to follow, the Oslo Philharmonic successfully established itself as one of the major international orchestras, through tours and recordings under the leadership of eminent Chief Conductors, including Herbert Blomstedt, Mariss Jansons, André Previn, Jukka-Pekka Saraste and Vasily Petrenko.
During the pandemic the orchestra also quickly intensified its digital commitment with an online concert series. This led to a tremendous success on both YouTube and social media, and resulted in an important archive of performances with Klaus Mäkelä and guest artists, which received the Norwegian Audience Development Innovation Award for 2021.
This season the Oslo Philharmonic and Klaus Mäkelä give their first international concerts together, including Sibelius cycle residencies at the Vienna Konzerthaus and Hamburg Elbphilharmonie and further performances in both Paris and London, including the BBC Proms.
Klaus Mäkelä is Chief Conductor of the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, Music Director of Orchestre de Paris and Artistic Director of the Turku Music Festival. An exclusive Decca Classics Artist, Mäkelä has recorded the complete Sibelius Symphony cycle with the Oslo Philharmonic. Released this Spring the debut album coincides with Mäkelä’s first tour with the orchestra, including performances in London and Paris and residencies at the Konzerthaus Wien and Elbphilharmonie Hamburg.
In the 2021/22 season Klaus Mäkelä appears as a Portrait Artist at the Wiener Konzerthaus and guest conducts the Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouworkest, London Philharmonic, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks and Münchner Philharmoniker. In summer 2022 he makes his first appearance at the BBC Proms with the Oslo Philharmonic and returns to the Verbier Festival to conduct the Verbier Festival and Verbier Festival Chamber orchestras as well as perform as a chamber musician.
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, Orchestre de Paris, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks and Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France.
Barbican’s Artist in Spotlight, Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen has been hailed ‘opera’s newest star’ (The Economist) and has taken the classical music world by storm ever since winning the much-coveted Operalia competition in 2015.
This season, Davidsen’s highlights include a triple appearance at the Metropolitan Opera as Eva in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, the title role of Ariadne auf Naxos, and as Chrysothemis in Elektra; a double appearance at the Wiener Staatsoper as Ellen Offord in an all-star performance of Britten’s Peter Grimes, as well as Sieglinde in Die Walküre; and Leonore in Fidelio at Maggio Musicale in Florence. On the concert platform, she joined the Orchestra de Paris for Strauss Op 27 and was featured as the soprano soloist in the Boston Symphony Orchestra tour. In June this year she makes her debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker and Kirill Petrenko with Zemlinksy’s Lyric Symphony.
Recently announced as the star of BBC’s Last Night of the Proms, Davidsen’s highlights this summer include a double appearance at the Bayreuth Festival: Elisabeth in Tannhäuser and Sieglinde in Die Walküre in a new production of Wagner’s Ring Cyle and appearances in recital at the Bergen, Turku and Peralada Festivals. UK audiences can see Davidsen take on the Royal Opera House stage next season with one of her signature roles: Elisabeth in Wagner’s Tannhäuser as well as a role debut as Elisabetta in Verdi’s Don Carlo.
In August 2020, she was one of the first stars featured by the Metropolitan Opera as part of their celebrated series: Met Stars Live in Concert. Davidsen’s rendition of Grieg’s En Svane and Ved Rondane was then broadcast together with the New Year Speech of King Harald V of Norway. In May 2021 she was awarded Female Singer of the Year by the International Opera Awards.
‘It’s been a long time since a singer has generated as much buzz,’ wrote Gramophone in the review of her debut album for Decca, which debuted at number one in the 2019 UK Classical charts. Since then, she has released two further solo albums on the label to equal acclaim: an orchestral recital of Beethoven, Wagner and Verdi, and a stunning Grieg recital with Leif Ove Andsens.