Wind Quintet - Kokkonen
Quintet (1994) - Kalevi Aho
Quintet Op 39 - Prokofiev
Nonet - Martinu
Till Eulenspiegel - Strauss/Hasenohrl
The opening evening concert of Kilkenny Arts Week brought a first Irish visit from the chamber ensemble of the Finnish orchestra, Sinfonia Lahti. Based in the town of Lahti (population around 100,000), where it was founded in 1949, this orchestra came to international attention under its current conductor, Osmo Vanska, not least for its unique recording of the original version of Sibelius's Violin Concerto.
The 10 players of the chamber ensemble, with Vanska (who pursues a parallel career as clarinettist) in the line-up, presented an unusual and challenging programme which served to introduce the work of two major Finnish composers alongside rarely-heard chamber works by Prokofiev and Martinu.
The opera, The Last Temp- tations, is generally acknowledged to be the masterpiece of Joonas Kokkonen (19211996). It was at the heart of the Finnish opera boom of the 1970s and has achieved around 250 performances. The Wind Quintet of 1973, also in the composer's later, post twelve-tone style, follows a relatively austere, tightly-knit opening Andante with three movements of lighter disposition.
Kalevi Aho (born 1949) began his career writing symphonies after the manner of Shostakovich, graduating over the years to a more complex aesthetic which has found Finnish commentators likening his current "impure", polyglot approach to that of Schnittke. The three-movement 1994 Quintet for alto saxophone, bassoon, viola, cello and double bass is a substantial work (over half-an-hour long), strikingly coloured by much high writing for the two wind instruments and with an absorbingly trenchant, motoric middle movement.
Prokofiev's Quintet for oboe, clarinet, violin, viola and double bass is in the provocative, steely style he favoured in the 1920s; the lighter elements in this programme were provided by Martinu's dancing Nonet and Hasenohrl's diverting re-working (for quintet) of Strauss's Till Eulenspiegel.
The Lahti players delivered everything with a polish and elan which, unusually, communicated with a slight sense of remoteness in the normally accommodating acoustic of St Canice's Cathedral.
