BBC PROM 27, Friday 9 August, 2024 BBC Symphony Orchestra, conductor: Sakari Oramo
Kaija Saariaho’s composition Mirage takes its inspiration from the life of Maria Sabina, a shaman and visionary of the Mazatec people in Mexico. She used chants and ¨holy children¨ (read: magic mushrooms) to heal people that in the 1960s and 70s attended her rituals. Hippies, anti-establishment figures and bankers arrived from all over the world to her village in the Sierra Mazateca for spiritual guidance and local ‘shrooms’ . Kaija Saariaho set one of Sabina’s chants (translated into English) to her very own brand of spectral music.
The piece starts with an orchestral exhalation and Anssi Karttunen’s shimmering, ascending and gliding cello which summons up the soprano ( Silja Aalto) to make her opening statement: ¨I am a woman who flies/I am the sacred eagle woman, [the mushroom] says;¨
The cello backed by the large orchestra then conjures up a trance-like harmonic space before energy levels once more excelerate, reintroducing the soprano; her exalted chant soaring up to the mushroom-shaped acoustic diffusers of the Albert Hall. Saariaho has created a paean to the empowerment of women using modal and microtonal language that follows the inflections of the voice.The piece was composed in 2007 with Anssi Karttunen in mind and he cut through the hallucinogenic mist with ease. Silja Aalto was as sparkling as her dress was glittering in the role of ¨the eagle woman, the lady doll, the sacred clown¨.
This piece works so much better in the concert hall than on record or YouTube. I know, because I’ve now tried all different alternatives and media.
Can one be more nimble-fingered than the South Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho? The first prize-winner at the 2015 Chopin Competition is in so many ways an ideal interpreter for Mozart’s misnamed ‘Jeunehomme’ Piano concerto No.9 in E flat major, K271. Misnamed, because the 21-year old Mozart composed the work for the first-rate pianist Louise Victoire Jenamy. But apparently he didn’t know how to spell the young lady’s name correctly and the nickname ‘jeunehomme’ stuck.
The orchestra sets out with a fanfare-like, confident theme, but is immediately interrupted by the cheeky piano. OK fine, the orchestra answers, and instead presents a slightly more subdued exposition. But the piano will have to wait before its turn. That is the first and last time the piano will conform to the orchestra’s will. Pretty soon it is clear that the ensemble is at the pianist’s beck and call. This is the most finely developed Mozart concerto to date (1777) and the first in which the soloist really takes charge, without trying to dazzle too much. Seong-Jin Cho is never more gentle, while at the same time profound, than in the sad Andantino. His fingers turn into feathers, forming wings that take you on a consoling flight. This is the first movement in a Mozart concerto set in a minor key. There are so many passages for unaccompanied piano and unless you know the score it’s not always clear if it is a cadenza or not. Seong-Jin Cho actually plays Mozart’s own cadenzas, but in his thoughtful interpretation they seem to flow from the soloist’s own imagination.
The finale is in general quite cheerful, but the contemplative, downcast mood returns in the Menuetto and once more Seong-Jin Cho deals with the transition as if the slightly subdued interlude was just a cloud covering the sun. There is always an operatic element in Mozart’s concertos and it is no different in the presto which comes to an abrupt end with two banging chords.
Seong-Jin Cho ‘s encore was the Menuet from Ravel’s pensive Sonatine No.1. It makes me look forward to his solo appearances in the coming year, which contain works by Liszt and Ravel.
*Kaija Saariaho’s (1952-2023) death was a great loss to the (innovative) contemporary music scene. I had the pleasure of interviewing her twice, the last time in 2021 and she was a patient, attentive and above all friendly interviewee.
