ANCESTRAL TALES

SAT JAN 28 | 7:30 PM

Centennial Concert Hall

to create sounds and resonance inside the piano. The last movement is loud, fast, rhythmic, and powerful. It expends all its energy and ends quietly yet unsettled, returning in a way to the mood of the first movement.

Kalevi Aho

DOUBLE CONCERTO FOR TWO BASSOONS AND ORCHESTRA (2016) –NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE

The Double Concerto for Two Bassoons was composed in 2016 on the initiative of bassoon virtuoso Bram van Sambeek. Bram had previously performed and recorded my Bassoon Concerto (2004) and performed much of my bassoon chamber music as well. In Bram’s opinion, the big problem for bassoonists has been that the instrument is only quite rarely qualified as a soloist in orchestral concerts, and if this happens, then usually the orchestra’s own solo bassoonist is asked to play Mozart’s Bassoon Concerto, which not even belongs to Mozart’s most significant concerto production. Bram suggested that if I compose a double concerto for two bassoons, then he, or some other bassoonist, could perform it with the orchestra’s solo bassoonist. It would also be the first-ever double concerto for two bassoons and a normal-sized symphony orchestra – the few previous double bassoon concertos are old music, short in duration and written for a small orchestra.

The work has three movements, and both solo bassoons are quite equal in it, one is not more dominant than the other. I have tried to compose the concerto so that it would bring out the best of the bassoon and also show the virtuoso potential of the instrument.

The work was commissioned jointly by three orchestras, by the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchestra Sinfonica de Galicia and the Antwerp Philharmonic Orchestra. The premiere took place in Warsaw on 18 January 2019, with Bram van Sambeek and Leszek Wachnik as soloists, and the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra was conducted by Niklas Willén.

— KALEVI AHO