On 12 March, 2010, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra will perform its first concert with Finnish conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen in its Italian residence Ferrara. The programme comprises Gustav Mahler’s 1st symphony and Salonen’s own Violin Concerto, composed 2009.
Musicologist Paul Bekker once wrote that Mahler’s 1st Symphony is the composer’s “first-born symphony, but not a beginner’s work.” Indeed, the characteristic Mahler sound and the idiosyncrasies of his artistic vision are easily recognizable – the convergence between symphony and song, the collage-like incorporation of differing musical idioms, the extreme intensity and variety of the expression and the discontinuous use of form are some of the most noteworthy. The 1st Symphony achieved its fame in large part due to its third movement, in which Mahler used the canon “Brother Jacob” (“Frère Jacques”) in such an alienating way that this light-hearted folk song in major becomes an eerie danse macabre in minor.
Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Violin Concerto was premiered in Los Angeles under the baton of the composer on 9 April 2009, about a year before the MCO’s concert in Ferrara. The Los Angeles Times reported that the cheers for the concerto were rapturous. The soloist was the violinist Leila Josefowicz, to whom the composition is dedicated; she will also perform the solo part with the MCO in Ferrara.
The concerto consists of four movements with the titles “Mirage”, “Pulse I”, “Pulse II” and “Adieu”. In the program notes to the premiere, Salonen wrote the following about the concerto: “I decided to cover as wide a range of expression as I could imagine over the four movements of the Concerto: from the virtuosic and flashy to the aggressive and brutal, from the meditative and static to the nostalgic and autumnal. Leila Josefowicz turned out to be a fantastic partner in this process. She knows no limits, she knows no fear, and she was constantly encouraging me to go to places I was not sure I would dare to go. As a result of that process, this Concerto is as much a portrait of her as it is my more private narrative, a kind of summary of my experiences as a musician and a human being at the watershed age of 50.“
