Program

Mozart (1756–1791) wrote the opera La clemenza di Tito at a breakneck pace for the coronation celebrations of the new King of Bohemia, Emperor Leopold II, in Prague in autumn 1791. The opera had originally been commissioned from Antonio Salieri, but he did not have time to write it. The commission was thus bumped to Mozart, who accepted it despite having The Magic Flute on his desk at the same time. The Mozart family was in dire financial circumstances, and they could certainly use the 250 ducats offered for the commission.

The story goes that Mozart wrote La clemenza di Tito in 18 days. This is not necessarily true, but it is true that he wrote some music for the opera while on the mail coach en route to Prague and that to save time he delegated the recitatives to his pupil, Franz Xaver Süssmayr.

Tito was premiered in Prague on 6 September 1791. Leopold II and his spouse Maria Luisa did not like it, and it was politely ignored at court. Yet when performances were opened up to the public at large, it became a great success. Today, Tito gets mixed reviews. Some feel that the music is a low-key routine effort, while others feel that the opera is underappreciated. What is agreed is that the story is hampered by Pietro Metastasio’s uninspiring libretto. The overture, however, needs no apologies: it is a magnificent orchestral piece.

Composer, pianist and conductor Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921) was a giant on the French music scene for decades. Conservative in his tastes, he was a champion of classical values. The older he grew, the more incomprehensible the evolution of music seemed to him. In the end, he came to hate Debussy and Stravinsky with a vengeance, so much so that this did harm to his reputation.

Today, only a handful of works out of Saint-Saëns’s extensive output are regularly performed. One of these is his Violin Concerto no. 3 in B minor op. 61, completed in 1880. It is dedicated to the legendary Spanish violinist Pablo de Sarasate, who premiered the work in Hamburg in autumn 1880.

Saint-Saëns’s first two Violin Concertos are vehicles for virtuoso pyrotechnics, but the third one is lyrically dramatic. While the solo part certainly poses technical challenges, it does not embrace complexity for its own sake. The Concerto has the traditional three movements. The first (Allegro non troppo) opens with a passionate theme presented by the soloist, as in Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto. The movement is classically lucid in its structure. The slow movement (Andantino quasi allegretto) is a lovely barcarole. The finale is an adaptation of a piece that Saint-Saëns had written for Sarasate in 1859, Caprice brillant for violin and piano. It opens with a brief introduction (Molto moderato e maestoso) followed by the main section (Allegro non troppo) with a Spanish flavour to it.

Austro-Czech composer and pianist Erwin Schulhoff (1894–1942) was a Jewish Communist who developed an interest in Schönberg and Debussy and on the other hand in tangos and Baroque music. He applied for Soviet citizenship when the Second World War began. His application was accepted, but the Nazis arrested him before he could leave Prague. In 1941, he was transferred to Wülzburg Prison in Bavaria, where he died of tuberculosis just over a year later.

Schulhoff’s early works are in a late Romantic style. After the First World War, he became enthusiastic about Dadaism and created a number of experimental works. Jazz influences can be heard for instance in the uproarious Suite for Chamber Orchestra (1921) and the ‘jazz oratorio’ H.M.S. Royal Oak (1930). In the 1930s, he wrote music for political occasions, such as the oratorio Komunistický Manifest (1932).

Five Pieces (Fünf Stücke für Streichquartett, 1924), as its original title indicates, was written for string quartet. It was premiered at the ISCM festival in Salzburg in the autumn of the same year and attracted considerable attention. The work contains playful allusions to popular music of the day and reflects the composer’s interest in dance. “I have an extraordinary passion for fashionable dances,” Schulhoff confessed to Alban Berg, “and there are times when I go dancing night after night [...] — this gives my creative work a phenomenal impulse.” The pieces were arranged for orchestra by Manfred Honeck and Tomáš Ille.

Austrian conductor Manfred Honeck has forged a long and distinguished relationship with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, now in his seventeenth season as its music director, with his contract running through 2027–28.

Honeck received his musical training at the Academy of Music in Vienna. Many years as a violist with the Vienna Philharmonic and the Vienna State Opera Orchestra have shaped his distinctive artistic voice. He began his conducting career as assistant to Claudio Abbado and as leader of the Vienna Youth Orchestra.

His earlier positions include serving as chief conductor of the MDR Symphony Orchestra Leipzig, music director of the Norwegian National Opera, and chief conductor of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. As a guest conductor he has led many of the world’s foremost orchestras, among them the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Berlin Philharmonic, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the London Philharmonic, and the Orchestre de Paris.

Born in 2011, Lilja Haatainen started playing the violin at the age of three. She studied at the Oulu Conservatory until 2022 when she moved to study with Janne Malmivaara. In addition, she is student of the Finland Violin Academy.

Haatainen made her concerto debut at the age of only eight, when she was chosen as a soloist for the Oulu Symphony Orchestra’s Young Soloists concert. In 2022, Lilja won the 10–12-year-old category of the national Jyväskylä Violin Competition and in the same year she successfully achieved 1st prize in the 9–13-year-old category of the Louis Spohr International Competition for Young Violinists in Germany.

Haatainen has performed as a soloist with many of the Finnish orchestras such as Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Lahti Symphony Orchestra, Tapiola Sinfonietta, Finnish Chamber Orchestra, Jyväskylä Sinfonia, Oulu Sinfonia, and Vaasa City Orchestra as well as in Germany with Jena Philharmonic Orchestra. Conductor collaborations include Nicholas Collon, Dalia Stasevska, Kristian Sallinen and Rumon Gamba.

The principle of putting on regular concerts given by an orchestra of top musicians has remained right up to the present day in the over 140 years since the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra was formed. It premiered most of the symphonic works by Jean Sibelius with the composer himself conducting, and continues its commitment to contemporary music by commissioning works by composers both Finnish and foreign. 

Now a band of 102 musicians, the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra annually performs to a total audience of over 110,000 and has become an important constituent of its host city’s cultural capital. It also reaches people who for one reason or another cannot attend concerts at the Helsinki Music Centre, for in addition to making international tours, it sends small ensembles out across the city, provides opportunities for young people to perform and, through its active education programme, is able to make contact with special groups. For the third time it invited an entire age group – this time all the children born in Helsinki in 2020 – to enjoy music with their families over the next seven years as members of the HPO Kids -program.  

The HKO Screen concerts and background interviews screened live or recorded on the Internet makes the process of creating a piece of music even more readily accessible. 

The orchestra has a three-member Artistic Leadership Team, which comprises Chief Conductor and Artistic Director Jukka-Pekka Saraste, Principal Guest Conductor and Artistic Co-director Pekka Kuusisto and Composer-in-Residence Anna Thorvaldsdottir.