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Start Your JournalNDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester / Johan Dalene / Jukka-Pekka Saraste
by Jean Sibelius, Thomas Adès, Johan Dalene, Jukka Pekka Saraste, Tchaikovsky,
Personal Reflection
There was something different about sitting in Elbphilharmonie. Like the space itself was part of the music. Every note clear, every sound and instrument could be heard for it self and not exactly blending into a music piece, but falling into space like a puzzle. Jean Sibelius’ The Bard felt distant and a bit mysterious. Not something you fully understand, more something you follow. The harp came and went like a memory you can’t quite hold onto. It made me think of the artist as someone always slightly out of reach, even in their own work. Thomas Adès adds something else: music that keeps moving without really going anywhere. No clear start or finish, just circling around a feeling. Then Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique: full emotion, no holding back. It moves through everything: tenderness, tension, heaviness… and then that ending just fades down instead of resolving. It doesn’t comfort you, it stays with you. What stayed with me is how all of them, in different ways. Not telling stories directly, rather like carrying something through sound. Maybe that’s what an artist really is. Not the storyteller, but the medium.
About This Artwork
SIBELIUS: TIMELESS ARTIST PORTRAIT "The Bard" Jean Sibelius called one of his many symphonic poems. You don't know what exactly the piece is about. Only that a wandering poet and singer is the focus, just as he appears in many legends of Nordic mythology. And this bard, of course, misses his instrument: the harp, which plays an important role in Sibelius' score. Probably Sibelius was simply about a timeless artist portrait - because aren't he and his performers basically all "bards"? One of them is his compatriot, the Finnish Jukka Pekka Saraste, who as conductor is one of the most sensitive Sibelius bards on the scene. He has impressively proved this to the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra in performances of his symphonies. It is not possible without Sibelius, but this time the current head of the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra leaves it at the almost eight-minute opening piece and otherwise devotes himself to an absolute heavyweight of Russian romanticism: Piotr Tchaikovsky's highly emotional »Pathétique«. With passionate sounds, the composer unrolls before our ears a huge musical panorama of human sorrows, joys, sufferings and hopes in his last and probably most popular symphony. Until the possibly also autobiographical work sinks deeply into the depth at the end... Tchaikovsky's sixth has an emphatic ending - a category that Thomas Adès actually wants to avoid in his violin concerto "Concentric Paths". Because according to the title, the successful Briton in the composition in 2005 was about the idea of the aimless concentric circle around a center of center - and without beginning and end. Of course, this cannot be fully realized in the linear art form of music, but at least in this case the expressive middle movement is the longest and most important of the concert. With over 1,000 performances worldwide, it has long become a contemporary classic and fascinates the greatest vioinists of our time - including the Swedish-Norwegian overflyer Johan Dalene, who is said to have an extremely singing tone. Just a real "bard".
- Location
- Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg
- Date experienced
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