LONDON PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA • 27 NOVEMBER 2020
PROGRAMME NOTES LOTTA WENNÄKOSKI BORN 1970
VERDIGRIS 2015 – APPROX 11 MINS – LONDON PREMIERE
‘If only his musical intuition were a little less capricious’, wrote the critic Karl Flodin about En Saga in 1893. My aim is thus to be as capricious as I can with the material picked up from Sibelius’s work. Another impulsive choice is to also quote another piece by Sibelius at the end of my work: I couldn’t help including a howling moment from the Andante Festivo. It is a work deeply rooted in the Finnish consciousness, especially if you have grown up playing a string instrument.
© Maarit Kytöharju
How to refer to the music of Jean Sibelius in a way that would hopefully lead to something personal and fruitful in 2015? Not an easy task. It is clear that I cannot touch the soundness of the symphonies that I sincerely love. I soon came to think of the tone-poem En Saga, which I find less close yet full of musical energy. The piece also contains some gestures that fit my orchestral ideas more than well – the string arpeggios and the backbeat rhythms, for example. So why not continue the fairytale?!
The title Verdigris refers to patina – a thin layer on a surface that is produced by age. The word originally comes from a pigment called ‘green of Greece’. Isn’t that more or less what composers do – write new layers on music history, even if their work explicitly refers to older music? Hopefully the patina of Verdigris is green, too. Lotta Wennäkoski
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‘I REALLY LIKE WRITING FOR THE ORCHESTRA. I AM INTRIGUED BY THE LIMITATIONS THAT COME WITH AN ORCHESTRA – AND WOULDN’T REALLY SEE THEM AS LIMITATIONS AT ALL.’ LOTTA WENNÄKOSKI
