On 16 May Petri Aarnio takes up Oliver Knussen’s Violin Concerto at the Helsinki Music Centre with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by David Afkham. One of Oliver Knussen’s most celebrated works, it has received well over 100 performances internationally since its 2002 debut with Pinchas Zukerman.
The 17-minute work begins and ends with the same arresting sonority – a clangorous tubular-bell chord and a stratospheric high E on the violin. “At times”, observed Knussen, “the soloist resembles a tightrope walker progressing along a (decidedly unstable) high wire strung across the span that separates the opening and closing sounds.”
Its three movements are played without a pause, with titles (Recitative, Aria, and Gigue) suggesting a certain theatricality – Zukerman had previously conducted the US premiere of Knussen’s opera Where the Wild Things Are at the Minnesota Opera in 1985; the composer had also mooted the idea of subtitling the piece “in three scenes”. “It is beautifully direct”, wrote Andrew Clements in the Guardian, “the scoring is full of sleights of hand and brilliantly imagined moments, while the harmonic world is sure and never for a moment predictable.”
The Violin Concerto was commissioned by the Pittsburgh Symphony, Mariss Jansons, Music Director, and The Philadelphia Orchestra, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Music Director for the celebrated violinist, but has since found exponents in Isabelle van Keulen, Clio Gould, James Ehnes, and Daniel Pioro. Leila Josefowicz has been an ardent champion, giving 46 performances to date and recording it with the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, conducted by the composer. She presented the piece with the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Proms, the Chicago Symphony, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and Leipzig Gewandhaus; in 2019 she performed it with Susanna Mälkki and the LA Philharmonic as part of a tribute to the late composer.
The concerto is also among those offered to the finalists of the International Jean Sibelius Violin Competition in Helsinki on 29 May, where it would be presented by the FRSO and Dima Slobodeniouk; with sixteen contestants provisionally choosing the piece for the finals, it has been the most popular choice, alongside that of Magnus Lindberg.