{ program notes
San Francisco and Lahti symphonies , KBS and Bournemouth symphony orchestras , Swedish and Finnish radio symphonies , Danish National Symphony and the Philharmonia Orchestra . He has performed at Carnegie Hall , Lincoln Center , The Kennedy Center , Wigmore Hall and the Auditorium du Louvre . He has also appeared in a number of renowned festivals including Lucerne Piano , Bergen , Grant Park , Aspen and Sibelius .
Mr . Pohjonen frequently collaborates with musicians such as Karen Gomyo , Yura Lee , Christian Poltéra and Osmo Vänskä . Selected for the CMS Two Residency Program for Outstanding Young Artists , he appears regularly with The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center .
Highlights of this season include debut performances with the Cleveland Orchestra , Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and Antalya State Symphony Orchestra . Chamber highlights include concerts at the Library of Congress , Wigmore Hall , Opera de Limoges and the Suvisoitto Festival .
Mr . Pohjonen released his debut CD under the Dacapo label in 2009 with the Danish National Symphony Orchestra under Ed Spanjaard . His recital at Music @ Menlo ’ s 2010 Festival led to a recording of works by Mozart , Grieg , Handel and Brahms .
Mr . Pohjonen began piano studies in 1989 at the Junior Academy of the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki , and completed his master ’ s degree at the Sibelius Academy . Winner of numerous Scandinavian piano competitions including First Prize at the 2004 Nordic Piano Competition in Nyborg , Denmark , he was selected by Sir András Schiff as winner of the Klavier Festival Ruhr Scholarship in 2009 .
Juho Pohjonen is making his BSO debut .
About the concert :
Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage
Felix Mendelssohn
Born in Hamburg , Germany , February 3 , 1809 ; died in Leipzig , Germany , November 4 , 1847
Felix Mendelssohn had a remarkable childhood and adolescence . Grandson of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn , he was precocious both musically and intellectually , and his wealthy banker father saw to it that he received the best education available . Mendelssohn ’ s musical gifts manifested very early ; by his teens , he was already a superb pianist and organist and a budding conductor . At 16 , with his Octet for string instruments , he revealed himself to be a composer with a unique , fully mature voice , and the next year , 1826 , brought another work of genius : the Overture to A Midsummer Night ’ s Dream .
As the ship nears its port , pounding timpani mimic the harbor cannon saluting its arrival .
When he was 12 , Mendelssohn ’ s composition teacher Carl Friedrich Zelter brought the precocious child to meet Goethe , the grand old man of German literature . Goethe was charmed by the boy ’ s keen mind and musical talent , and , despite some 60 years ’ difference in their ages , a friendship was struck up that lasted until Goethe ’ s death in 1832 . The poet-philosopher became , along with Shakespeare , one of Mendelssohn ’ s early creative inspirations . In 1828 , Mendelssohn wrote the beautiful concert overture Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage as an instrumental setting of two short Goethe poems of the same name .
Mendelssohn described this piece as being in two “ tableaux ” or pictures . The first is a slow , static Adagio that expresses the text of the first poem , “ Meeresstille ” or “ Calm Sea .” In Mendelssohn and Goethe ’ s era of sail-powered travel , a flat , windless sea was not a desirable condition . In Goethe ’ s poem , the sailor is “ troubled ” by the “ dreadful , deathly stillness ” all around , and in the music we hear his apprehension in the uneasy clashing of two flutes . Mendelssohn portrays the “ enormous breadth of ocean ” in broadly spaced string chords and the motionless waters by harmonies becalmed in the home key of D Major .
At last as a solo flute gusts upward , we hear the first stirrings of a breeze . The tempo accelerates to Allegro , and rolling figures in the strings portray the billowing waves while upward-snapping violins describe the wind tugging at and filling the sails . Now to a buoyant woodwind tune , the ship leaps forward on its “ Prosperous Voyage .” As the ship nears its port , pounding timpani mimic the harbor cannon saluting its arrival , and to trumpet fanfares , the ship sails triumphantly toward the dock . But Mendelssohn saves one bit of poetic magic for the music ’ s close : a luminous soft ending .
Instrumentation : Two flutes , piccolo , two oboes , two clarinets , two bassoons , contrabassoon , two horns , three trumpets , timpani , strings .
Piano Concerto in G Major
Maurice Ravel
Born in Ciboure , France , March 7 , 1875 ; died in Paris , December 28 , 1937
Maurice Ravel was a masterful composer for both the orchestra and the piano . Strangely , he did not combine these two sonorities until quite late in his career when he wrote two remarkable concertos , the Concerto for the Left Hand and the Concerto in G Major .
The impetus for the Concerto in G was Ravel ’ s need for a work to show off his performing skills during a North American tour in 1928 , but this painstakingly slow creator did not manage to launch the concerto before his boat left . It was finally written between 1929 and 1931 , simultaneously with the Concerto for the Left Hand , created for the disabled Austrian pianist Paul Wittgenstein , and like that work , was spiced with jazz touches . Opposed to the heavy Teutonic approaches of Beethoven and Brahms , Ravel stated that for him , a concerto should be more of a “ divertissement ,” written “ in the same spirit of those of Mozart and Saint-Saëns . The music of a concerto should , in my opinion , be light-hearted and brilliant , and not aim at profundity or at dramatic effects .”
14 Overture | bsomusic . org