Lamb & Hayward Masterworks: Whitehead, Kuusisto, Sibelius

Programme Notes

Retrieving the fragility of peace (2022)

GILLIAN WHITEHEAD (b. 1941)

Dame Gillian Karawe Whitehead DNZM, MNZM (Ngai Te Rangi, Tuhoe) has been an integral contributor to the direction of contemporary classical in Aotearoa throughout her long career, both here and in Australia where she taught for many years. In 2018 she became an Arts Foundation Te Tumu Toi Icon , and in 2021 received a Ngā Tohu ā Tā Kingi Ihaka Sir Kingi Ihaka Award from Creative NZ, recognising her lifetime contribution to the arts.

Her music – written for orchestral, vocal, choral, chamber, operatic and solo forces – sometimes involves taonga pūoro, te reo Māori, or directed improvisation. Jane Weiner LePage’s collection Women Composers, Conductors, and Musicians of the Twentieth Century describes Whitehead’s work as “providing the listener with new and exciting mediums of expression…one can safely predict that her accomplishments will be included in the history of music for she is simply too good to be denied.”

Retrieving the fragility of peace was commissioned by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra for their 2022 season, and she writes:

“While I was writing this piece, my dear friend and colleague, Lyell Cresswell, who I’d known for 50 years since we were young composers-at-large in Britain, was diagnosed with cancer and died a few weeks later.

The piece is dedicated to Lyell and his wife Catherine. One evening, replete with food and wine, the three of us were talking, and I was very tired. I opened my eyes and saw them looking at me strangely. ‘Did I say something?’ I asked. ‘Retrieving the fragility of the voice’, they replied. Sleep talking, and hence the slightly varied title.

Before I’ve heard a piece, sometimes it’s hard to know what to say about it, as it doesn’t come alive until it’s performed, and that’s certainly true of this one, which draws on ideas I’ve worked with recently, but in a more abstract way. I think it may reflect something of the times we’re living in, but words can’t express as music does. It must for itself.”

A review of the premiere in the New Zealand Herald called it “intensely engaging music” and spoke of an “all-embracing Whitehead world, [with] twittering birdsong and the rumbling of a perhaps discontent earth. [….] The last few exquisitely scored pages ended with shimmering strings and percussion, suggesting that treasured peace should not be taken for granted.”

Violin Concerto Op. 28 (2012)

KUUSISTO (1974–2022)

Finnish musician Jaakko Kuusisto worked in many facets of the industry, achieving at the highest international level, and contributing an astonishing amount to the music scene in Finland before being diagnosed with a brain tumor at the age of only 46. He passed away two years later. He was a prize-winning violinist, including in the Queen Elizabeth Competition, after which conductor Osmo Vänskä invited him to be the new concertmaster of the Lahti Symphony Orchestra. Kuusisto also conducted several orchestras, was the Artistic Director of a chamber music festival in Finland, and composed over 40 works, including this Violin Concerto from 2011-12.

Kuusisto’s broad-ranging outlook also applied to his wider life – he was elected to the Green Party of his local municipal council not long before his cancer diagnosis, and he and his wife launched a boat taxi service to the Savonlinna Opera Festival, where he would talk to the passengers on board about the opera they were about to see.

Kuusisto had long planned to write a violin concerto for himself to perform, but the inspiration to write this in fact came from another prominent Finnish violinist who commissioned him: Elina Vähälä. It is a hugely colourful work, and really showcases the virtuosity of the violin as well as the full potential of the orchestra – one reviewer said, “some passages sound as if they drifted in from a John Williams film score.” Gramophone reviewed the premiere recording of the work – with Kuusisto conducting, and Elina Vähälä playing violin – calling it a “colourful and dramatic score… a vivacious half-hour.”

Even longstanding classical music lovers in Aotearoa will likely be discovering a new composer with Kuusisto – keen listeners might be able to hear glimmers of the sound worlds of Prokofiev, or Sibelius, or Barber, Shostakovich, or even music from Eastern European folk traditions. Right from the fiery opening featuring just the solo violinist in an extended cadenza, listeners will know they are in for an exciting three-movement adventure, from a composer whose work deserves broader recognition.

Symphony No. 2 in D Major Op. 43

SIBELIUS (1865–1957)

Sibelius’ Symphony No. 2 was the first work that our Sibelius Academy-trained Chief Conductor Benjamin Northey conducted with CSO – we return to this gem of the repertoire in celebration of Ben’s tenth year at the helm.

Jean Sibelius is undoubtedly one of Finland’s greatest composers – one who helped to bring a national identity through music, and whose seven symphonies are performed and recorded around the world. His face was on the Finnish 100-mark note, and Finland celebrate a Day of Finnish Music on December 8 each year – coinciding with Sibelius’ birthday.

When he was considering the direction of his second symphony, Sibelius had the opportunity to retreat to a mountain villa near Rapallo in Italy to compose in 1900-1901. During his time there, sketches were created that would become various sections of the symphony, including a theme that was inspired by a vision of Don Juan being visited by a silent guest – death. Sibelius wrote about this haunting vision on the back of a rough sketch of a bassoon melody that would become a feature of the second movement.

Sibelius didn’t attach any specific storyline details to the finished work – even going as far as to categorically deny any programmatic links that musicologists may have come up with – but the timing of the symphony’s premiere in 1902 meant it was immediately taken up as an anthem of national liberation, whether part of the plan or not. The Grand Duchy of Finland was amid what they would go on to call the Great Russification, which was set to place Finland even further under the control of the Russian Empire, suppressing its autonomy.

Robert Kajanus, founder and conductor of the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, said of the symphony relating to the political climate of the time: “The Andante strikes one as the most broken-hearted protest against all the injustice that threatens at the present time to deprive the sun of its light and our flowers of their scent. […] The finale develops towards a triumphant conclusion intended to rouse in the listener a picture of lighter and confident prospects for the future.” The Finnish conductor Osmo Vänskä has said that to him the symphony “is connected with our nation's fight for independence, but it is also about the struggle, crisis and turning-point in the life of an individual. This is what makes it so touching.”

Any political links aside, people use a range of synonyms to describe this work: heroic, optimistic, triumphant, and even “a song of praise for summer and the joy of life.” Listeners will instantly latch onto memorable melodies and lush orchestral harmonies – there’s no doubt it’s a symphony full of romantic tunes, and a firm favourite in the record collections of classical music fans. It also serves as the ideal work for a newcomer to orchestral music to go home and excitedly find a recording, to revisit its beauty whenever a day happens to call for a soundtrack of optimism.



Thank you to Hannah Darroch for our programme notes.