Themes of this year’s Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival
Czech music, the solo songs of Sibelius, and Luigi Boccherini

Three premieres

The main themes for the 2005 Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival are Czech music, the solo songs of Sibelius, and Luigi Boccherini. The music by Sibelius for small ensemble will also be well represented. The Festival’s commissioned work is a sextet by Paavo Korpijaakko. Also to receive there first performance are the guitar sonata Jehkin Iivana by Olli Mustonen and the vocal cycle Three Morning Songs by Mikko Heiniö. This summer will be Seppo Kimanen’s last as Artistic Director of the Festival. His successor in 2006 will be viola player Vladimir Mendelssohn. The 36th Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival will run from 17 to 31 July, 2005.

In addition to the three main themes the programme will, for example, include piano trios by Beethoven and the complete suites for solo cello by Bach, performed by Natalia Gutman. There will be solo songs by Kilpinen, Kuula and Merikanto as well as Sibelius, and the programme will take in some major contemporary works from Australia.

Over fifteen days the Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival will be unfolding three centuries of the musical history of Europe at 88 concerts given by 176 artists in all.

The Sibelius songs require a number of singers, setting up a new Festival record of 11. The number of pianists (25) likewise exceeds all previous records. Among the singers appearing at Kuhmo this year will be mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter, Polish-born tenor John Daszak and Cyprian baritone Kyros Patsalides, now on their first visit to Kuhmo. Making a return visit will be soprano Maria- Christina Kiehr, and Finland will be represented by baritones Tommi Hakala, Jorma Hynninen, Arttu Kataja and Topi Lehtipuu, sopranos Kirsi Tiihonen and mezzo-sopranos Tiina Penttinen and Riikka Rantanen.

As pianists the Festival has engaged the services of such artists as Julius Drake, Eero Heinonen, Paavali Jumppanen, Juhani Lagerspetz, Risto Lauriala, Vyacheslav Novikov, Jukka Nykänen and Mirka Viitala. Making their first appearance will be Severin von Eckardstein, winner of the 2003 Queen Elisabeth Competition, and the Capella Apollinis, which will be bringing alone a genuine 18th century fortepiano.

The list of violinists features such names as Yoshiko Arai, Ik-Hwan Bae, Chloë Hanslip, Pekka Kuusisto, Geneviève Laurenceau, Kaija Saarikettu, Hagai Shaham and Pavel Vernikov, of cellists Christoph Richter, Michel Strauss, Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi and Marko Ylönen, in addition to Gutman. Also to be heard at the Festival are Mika Väyrynen, accordion, and Ismo Eskelinen, guitar.

Eleven quartets will be appearing at the Festival: the Ardeo, Danel, Dante, Emperor, Mozarteum and Utrecht, and the Finnish Kamus, Meta4, Jean Sibelius and New Helsinki. The Australian Goldner Quartet will be playing works by such front-line contemporary Australian composers as Peter Sculthorpe (b. 1929), Matthew Hindson (b. 1968) and Carl Vine (b. 1954).

The Virtuosi di Kuhmo will be performing at the Festival, for the first time under the baton of Okko Kamu, as will The Brook Street Band, a Baroque ensemble.

No fewer than three wind quintets can be heard this year: the Ma’alot Quintet, the Phoenix Quintet and Arctic Hysteria.

Ending the 2005 Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival will be the Lumen valo vocal ensemble in a programme of responses for Good Friday and Easter Saturday from Responsoria pro hebdomada sancta by Dismas Zelenka (1679-1745). This concert will be held in Kuhmo Church.

The Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival has traditionally been accompanied by music courses and more recently by the Young Chamber Musicians programme under their Artistic Director Junio Kimanen. Now being held for the second time, the Young Chamber Musicians programme is an opportunity for upcoming talents to work and perform with more experienced colleagues as part of the faculty. The participants are chosen by application and demo in conjunction with the applications for the music courses. This year’s faculty consists of Michel Strauss, Kaija Saarikettu, Vyacheslav Novikov, Ilari Angervo and the New Helsinki Quartet.

The music courses also take in four masterclasses: one on the music of Sibelius by Eero Heinonen and others by Hagai Shaham, violin, Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi and Michel Strauss, cello. The masterclass in chamber music will be taught by the Danel Quartet.

Czech theme

More than a hundred works by Czech composers from the 18th century to the present day will be heard at this year’s Festival. These will include all the string quartets by Dvorák apart from some of his early works, and music by the leading contemporary Czech composer Kryštof Maratka (b. 1972).

Seppo Kimanen had long been mulling over the idea of a Kuhmo Festival focusing on Czech music from the Baroque to the present day. “Although Prague has only in the past few decades attracted international attention as a city of culture, it has always been precisely this. Right in the middle of Europe, it has been open to influence, such as that of Vienna. Slav, Italian and German culture have met in Prague, and the Roman-Catholic Church has also left its mark. One could say that as in Vienna, it has been home to all influences, but it has also had a strong Slav element.

“Prague became marginalised in the 20th century partly because of the Iron Curtain. Despite the stylistic restrictions imposed by the Communist Party, the country nevertheless produced some excellent music, which we now have a chance to hear. Martinu wrote dozens of works that have never been performed in Finland. Of the older composers, Dvorák, for example, has a vast amount of chamber music, Janácek less chamber music but of a high standard, and the chamber music of Smetana has been overshadowed by his operas. And there are dozens of earlier masters. One of them, Jan Ladislav Zelenka, was rated higher by his contemporaries than J.S. Bach, and music by him will be performed in the final concert.”

The solo songs of Sibelius

The second main theme of this year’s Festival is the solo songs of Sibelius. More than 60 songs will be heard in all. “Out of his broad output, only a dozen or so of the best-known are actually sung,” Kimanen points out. “We tend to speak of Sibelius as a symphonist, but his songs really do deserve recognition. They are a magnificent demonstration of his versatility.”

The Kuhmo programme also contains a wealth of piano and violin works by Sibelius, since Kimanen specifically wants to throw light on the intimate side of the maestro’s output.

Luigi Boccherini

The attention to the music of Luigi Boccherini (1743-1805) is a continuation of last summer’s Haydn theme. “Some say Boccherini could be Haydn’s wife! He wrote some of the finest court music of the times,” is how Kimanen describes him. “He was the greatest cello virtuoso of his day and even today an important composer for any cellist.”

May will mark the bicentenary of Boccherini’s death. According to Kimanen, Boccherini is one of the numerous composers whose music is far too unfamiliar. “His works are often terribly difficult and call for a virtuosic technique, with the result that they tend not to be performed. Yet they are not meant to be revolutionary; they are entertainment characterised by spirit and good taste.”

New Artistic Director

“I’ve done one lifework. Now it’s time to go on to the next,” says Seppo Kimanen on resigning from the post of Artistic Director of the Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival. “I can now go on to other things with an easy mind. 35 years are a long time. I began with nothing and the event has, as it were, grown into a tree with many branches, and the time has come to prune them. The Festival is so strong that it can stand a change of Artistic Director. The Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival is in good shape and I know it will continue to thrive.”

Artist Professor, cellist Seppo Kimanen will be taking over as Director of the Finnish Institute in London in the course of the spring.

Vladimir Mendelssohn, Professor of chamber music at the Paris Conservatoire, viola player and composer, has begun the artistic planning for summer 2006, in partial collaboration with Seppo Kimanen.

The following companies and organisations have provided support for the Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival and music courses in 2005: The OP BANK Group, Metsähallitus, UPM, Outokumpu Oyj, Canon Oy, F-Musiikki, Graninge, Kainuun Sanomat, Kajaanin Puhelinosuuskunta, The Local Government Pensions Institution, Kuhmo Oy, Ponsse Oyj, ResComi Oy and Suomen Kuvalehti. Support has also been received from the Ministry of Education and the Municipality of Kuhmo. The budget for the 2005 Festival is €880,000.

FURTHER INFORMATION
Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival
Tel. +358 09 493 867
kuhmo.festival@kuhmofestival.fi
www.kuhmofestival.fi

source: Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival