From the top: Life for Music
Esa-Pekka Salonen
Music Director, Los Angeles Philharmonics
Salonen will compose the IAAF World Championships fanfares. Also coming up an opera to Paris and an orchestral composition to Chicago. The composer/conductor admits that rock has affected to his new music.
The IAAF World Championships in Helsinki start on 6th August 2005. Esa-Pekka Salonen will compose the medal podium fanfares plus a composition of them which will be performed in the end of the opening celebrations.
The composing career of Esa-Pekka Salonen will continue in hectic tempo. He will compose a piece for a tournee of Valeri Gergijev and the World Orchestra (founded by Georg Solti) by August. The time for composing this year is taken for these compositions. Next year Salonen will compose a choir and orchestral piece for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and obviously The Berlin Philharmoniker (conducted by Simon Rattle) will join as a co-subscriber.
And then comes the opera. But not necessarily Peter Hoegs Woman and Ape as Salonen had planned earlier. Everything is in my thinking hat. We are talking about the order placed by the Paris Opera and Gerard Mortier for the season 2009-2010.
The latest orchestral pieces of Salonen have been recently published on Wing on Wing CD by Deutsche Grammophon. They were recorded by the Symphony Orchestra of Finnish Radio in Helsinki. I am satisfied as the big recording companies do not normally publish composer portrayal recordings. Even the acoustics of the Helsinki Culture House have been criticized, the Radio Symphony Orchestra sounds fuller than ever. The recording engineer and the producer were skilful. The recording was mixed from 48 tracks and they digged up details which you cannot hear in the weaker concert halls.
The next recording for Deutsche Grammophon is planned by the pianist Hélène Grimaud. Salonen will conduct the Piano Concerto of Schumann with the Dresden Staatskapell. We are also re-designing the recording contract between the Los Angeles Philharmonics and DG in the way which may allow me to announce new DG-recordings soon.
Salonen hopes soon to make at least another recording of the Le Sacre du Printemps particularly in Los Angeles. Instead plans for recording the symphonies of Sibelius are halted. DG have a fresh Sibelius-cycle with the SO of Gothenburg and Neeme Järvi and they will not have a competing recording, goes his forecast.
Rock and pop have affected to his recent composings, Salonen tells. It was that I started from the European afterseriesness where everything was related by negations. Forbidden was many enjoyable things like melodies, modulations, resonance and pulse. Through Rock and living in Los Angeles I found the pulse and confidence to do even simplier things the classical composers still being the most influential to me, though.
The young chauffeurs of Salonen do play Foo Fighters and The Tool to him but his own modular language is something else. Rock works often by Schubertian song modulars when on our side the modulars are an open question which has to be thought and decided every time, Salonen compares.
Listeners of Salonen are also found through internet. The bonus piece of their record have occasionally been the most down-loaded classical recording in the U.S. It was nice to see how it was downloaded by partially the same people that also downloaded the Medúlla of Björk and film music by Waxman.
The eternal problem is the lack of time for composing as the conductor-Salonen takes so much of his time. Now they are working on a visit to Cologne and the series of performances of Wagners Tristan and Isolde as the new directions of Peter Sellars at the Paris Opera in April. My feelings now are that after the Los Angeles position will end, as the earliest propable 2008, I will not anymore take a leading conductor positions to have more time for composing, Salonen thinks.
What next?
Esa-Pekka Salonen will return to Finland in the end of June. He will conduct Anders Hillborg and Magnus Lindberg at the Porvoon Suvisoitto on 30th June and 1st July.
http://www.musicfinland.com/classical/avanti/suvisoitto/summersounds.html
In August he will conduct in opening ceremonies of the Helsinki IAAF World Championships,
http://www.helsinki2005.fi/index.php?&Lang=eng
continuing to the Baltic Festivities of Stockholm.
http://www.sr.se/berwaldhallen/Baltic/index.stm
Which Esa-Pekka Salonen (a co-founder) is creating for bigger than ever. This year the Festival broadens from Stockholm also to Helsinki and Tallinn. Salonen will conduct Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra in Helsinki and Tallinn and the SO of Swedish Radio in Stockholm. Also the Mariinski theatre from St. Petersburg and the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra will take part.
In the Helsinki Festival
http://www.helsinginjuhlaviikot.fi/english/index.html
Salonen will conduct at least the closing concert in the 4th September. The Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra will give the first performance for Mark-Anthony Turnagens trumpet concerto with Håkan Hardenberger as the soloist. Salonen will bring the orchestra to BBC Proms Festival in London where they will perform additionally Ravel and Sibelius.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/proms/
Salonen will again return to Helsinki in September for the third international Jean Sibelius Composers Competition. He will act as the chairman of the jury and as the artistic director of the competition. Salonen has invited conductors Jukka-Pekka Saraste and Oliver Knussen to the jury as well as the former M.D. of L.A. Philharmonics, Mr. Ernest Fleischmann.
The Los Angeles Philharmonics:
http://www.laphil.com/home.cfm
Translated & links added by Oz
From the text of Vesa Sirén in Helsingin Sanomat magazine
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