The opening
concert of the Turku Music Festival –Zarathustra – was this year a truly
interesting mix of different kinds of music. The Turku Philharmonic Orchestra
was conducted by Klaus Mäkelä and the soloist of the evening was baritone Thomas
Hampson. The second soloist of the evening, Dorothea Röschmann, had unfortunately
fallen ill, which brought some changes to the original programme.
The beginning
of the concert was a safe choice, that is, the ouverture from Richard Wagner’s
opera “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg”. It is enough to say, that it went well.
It was very interesting to follow Klaus Mäkelä’s work. His gaze seemed
positively hypnotic, when he gave instructions to some members of the
orchestra.
The second
part of the concert consisted of songs from Gustav Mahler’s collection “Des
Knaben Wunderhorn”, which Thomas Hampson sang. Interestingly enough Hampson sang
also part of the songs that had been marked for Röschmann in the original
programme. Hampson may no longer be in his fullest prime and in some points it
could be heard in his voice, but this was in no way disturbing in the end,
since his performing was so good. Mahler’s songs in this collection consist of humoristic
small songs, wistful ballad type of songs and dramatic bursts of emotions.
Hampson was able to change his tone almost by a click of fingers and I was
really impressed by his performing. As an encore he sang the song “Wo die
Schönen Trompeten blasen” and that was a superb end to his part of the evening.
After the interval the orchestra performed Kaija Saariaho’s piece “Asteroid” which changed almost without a break to Richard Strauss’s “Also sprach Zarathustra”. This piece turned out to be the highlight of the evening. The Turku Philharmonic Orchestra played as if possessed and the audience was mesmerized. There seemed to be no end to the applause and my trip back home went in a dreamlike state
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