{"id":837,"date":"2008-03-09T11:35:48","date_gmt":"2008-03-09T19:35:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2008\/03\/09\/finlandia\/"},"modified":"2013-02-07T18:46:38","modified_gmt":"2013-02-08T02:46:38","slug":"finlandia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2008\/03\/09\/finlandia\/","title":{"rendered":"finlandia"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"midnight<\/a>
\nmidnight sun – kevo, finland
\nphoto by josef stuefer<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

It’s the morning (afternoon, really, but daylight saving time be damned!) after our first classical series concert with our two Finnish guest artists, conductor Pietari Inkinen and violinist Pekka Kuusisto.\u00c2\u00a0 In a previous post<\/a>, I wrote about the often mysterious process of getting to know a new guest conductor and the factors which can complicate this often elaborate dating dance.\u00c2\u00a0 I was withholding judgment, waiting to see what would develop, on Mr. Inkinen, at that time.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Now I think I have some opinions that can actually hold some water on the subject.<\/p>\n

In short, I’m happy with Inkinen, and I think that most of the orchestra shares my opinion (or at least my friends who are the hardest to please seem to like him).<\/p>\n

Rehearsals are often a difficult means to determine the worth of a conductor.\u00c2\u00a0 A real technician can come in, show you insights into a score that you never knew before, dissect the piece, get the orchestra listening to each other, and make rehearsals a fantastic laboratory that makes the 2 and 1\/2 hours seem like 20 minutes.\u00c2\u00a0 Then the performances come, and it is all flat – all mechanics and no poetry.\u00c2\u00a0 The orchestra plays like a Swiss watch, effortlessly the scores of independent moving parts coalesce into one humming machine.\u00c2\u00a0 There is beauty and power in such performances, but is there soul?<\/p>\n

On the other hand, you can have a conductor come in and just sort of float through the pieces.\u00c2\u00a0 Sections play roughly together, the overall flow of the pieces are established, but nothing really gells in the rehearsal.\u00c2\u00a0 You begin to wonder why you are there at all – why not just run through the pieces and go home and wait for the performances?\u00c2\u00a0 But something strange is happening, and just what that is isn’t revealed until the performances.\u00c2\u00a0 All of a sudden there is this unique energy happening.\u00c2\u00a0 Those vague flapping gestures suddenly have urgent musical import, the pieces flow and sing, and the concert seems to last only 20 minutes.\u00c2\u00a0 They might not be the cleanest performances ever heard, but they sing with a deep current of poetry.<\/p>\n

As for the violinist Pekka Kuusisto, I’m not sure about him, yet.\u00c2\u00a0 He is obviously prodigiously gifted and has technique to burn, but he also has so many ideas about sound, in particular, that phrases never have a chance to sing and cover large arcs of time – there is always a tinkering going on, which to my ear interrupts the flow and distracts the ear.\u00c2\u00a0 I’d be interested to hear him in a less acerbic concerto, the Stravinsky lends itself to such treatment more than perhaps any other, but I’m afraid that the Brahms or Sibelius might get the same treatment, and I don’t think I could bear to listen to that.\u00c2\u00a0 Aside from that, Kuusisto is an active and interesting presence on stage, and well worth hearing.\u00c2\u00a0 Chances are, you won’t hear another violinist like him in your lifetime.\u00c2\u00a0 And variety is the spice of life, eh?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

midnight sun – kevo, finland photo by josef stuefer\u00c2\u00a0 It’s the morning (afternoon, really, but daylight saving time be damned!) after our first classical series concert with our two Finnish guest artists, conductor Pietari Inkinen and violinist Pekka Kuusisto.\u00c2\u00a0 In a previous post, I wrote about the often mysterious process of getting to know a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":303,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[148,299,115,135,2],"tags":[3668],"class_list":["post-837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-appreciations","category-conducting","category-music","category-soloists-recitals","category-the-orchestra-world","tag-oregon-symphony"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa8kC-dv","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":827,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2008\/03\/06\/first-meetings\/","url_meta":{"origin":837,"position":0},"title":"first meetings","author":"Charles Noble","date":"March 6, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Today we had the first rehearsals for our upcoming classical series concerts with Finnish conductor Pietari Inkinen. He's a guest conductor that we've never worked with before, and he's very new to the U.S. conducting circuit - this is his second US orchestra ever, his first having been the Cincinnati\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "conducting"","block_context":{"text":"conducting","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/conducting\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"pietari-inkinen-sm.jpg","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/03\/pietari-inkinen-sm.thumbnail.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":821,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2008\/03\/03\/better-living-through-chemistry\/","url_meta":{"origin":837,"position":1},"title":"better living through chemistry","author":"Charles Noble","date":"March 3, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"NSO bassist Jeff Weisner (with whom I was at Peabody Conservatory back in the day) has written an excellent blog post at Double Bass Blog concerning the delicate balance of chemistry that can make or break the relationship between orchestra and conductor. Since the National Symphony is, ahem, conducting a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "conducting"","block_context":{"text":"conducting","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/conducting\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":879,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2008\/03\/25\/another-new-face\/","url_meta":{"origin":837,"position":2},"title":"another new face","author":"Charles Noble","date":"March 25, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"We here at the OSO seem to the welcoming committee for conductors who are making their first forays into the North American market this year.\u00c2\u00a0 Earlier this month we welcomed Pietari Inkinen of Finland, who was in his second week of being in America (after a week in Cincinnati). This\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "conducting"","block_context":{"text":"conducting","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/conducting\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Juanjo Mena, conductor","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/03\/jjmena.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":842,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2008\/03\/11\/no-snappy-title-today\/","url_meta":{"origin":837,"position":3},"title":"no snappy title today","author":"Charles Noble","date":"March 11, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm just too wiped out to think of a snappy title this morning. We finished our classical series last night to very good audience response - several hundred of you took advantage of the ticket stub offer to repeat the concert experience (and some of whom were lucky friends who\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "conducting"","block_context":{"text":"conducting","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/conducting\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3998,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2010\/02\/06\/karen-gomyo-plays-prokofiev\/","url_meta":{"origin":837,"position":4},"title":"karen gomyo plays prokofiev","author":"Charles Noble","date":"February 6, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"This weekend's set of Classical series concerts at the Oregon Symphony feature the Canadian violinist Karen Gomyo, who I had a chance to hear several times when she was still just on the cusp of a career, most recently when she came to play the Bruch G minor Violin Concerto\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "soloists & recitals"","block_context":{"text":"soloists & recitals","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/soloists-recitals\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3129,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2009\/09\/18\/young-conductors-to-watch\/","url_meta":{"origin":837,"position":5},"title":"young conductors to watch","author":"Charles Noble","date":"September 18, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Alondra de la Parra - Photo: Courtney Perry The Daily Beast has an article about the current crop of young conductors who are either making it big or, in their opinion, are about to (the headline screams: Young Rock Stars of the Conducting World\").\u00a0 Some of these conductors have been\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "conducting"","block_context":{"text":"conducting","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/conducting\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"AlondradelaParra1web","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/09\/AlondradelaParra1web.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/303"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/837\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}