TO FINLAND!

Pekka Kuusisto takes us to the heart of Finnish music on Independence Day.  

Ida Moberg, an early Romantic composer and pioneer of Finnish music who has only gained recognition in recent years, composed an impressive portrait of nature. Rarely heard in concert, the Sunrise Suite radiates a picturesque national romanticism in the bright light of day.

Verdigris was a green pigment used in ancient Greece and also refers to a surface patinated by time. Thus, Lotta Wennäkoski’s Verdigris is a composition based on Jean Sibelius’s En saga, like a reincarnated outer shell. ‘In general the relationship with the old is somewhat blurred’, Wennäkoski has said. ‘Sometimes, as on this occasion, I have borrowed directly and audibly. Hopefully the patina of Verdigris is green, too.’

The inclusion of Sibelius’s Finlandia and Fredrik Pacius’s Maamme, on the other hand, is a tradition that cannot be ignored.

Symphonically together: Polttimo Oy