Herald Sun Review

ACO leader Richard Tognetti is off duty for the orchestra's current tour and the guest leader is young Finnish violinist Pekka Kuusisto. Finnish music has a special place in this strings-only program: besides Kuusisto, the orchestra has two permanent members and a visiting harmonium player from Finland. Kuusisto's fine arrangement of the String Quartet in D minor by Sibelius brought a new richness to the work.

Also from Finland was Sketches from Folkscenes (world premiere) by Timo Alakotila. It weaves folk music and original material together and uses the harmonium, a key instrument in Finnish fiddle bands whose timbre enhances the open sound of folk string playing. The chunky, pop and jazz-influenced second movement looked a pleasure to play.

In the Bach E major Violin Concerto, Kuusisto took a free, joyous approach to the first movement. A few improvised details in the third added a spontaneous feel.

Bright Shiners by Andrew Ford, a new commission, was an enjoyable piece with vivid textures and effective, flattering string writing. Its duration suited its musical concept perfectly.

Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No.3 took a fresh, modern approach with a lively bowing style, choppy but never rough. There was an exciting primal energy to the final movement. Rather than the more usual harpsichord continuo, ACO again used the harmonium - a logistical choice perhaps, but it worked. Kuusisto's playing explores many musical styles and his artistic imagination seems boundless. Best of all, hi inspiration spread to the other players and audience alike.

It says excellent things about Tognetti and his intentions for the orchestra that he engages guest leaders of Kuusisto's calibre in his absence.
Anna McAlister, Herald Sun

Finn finds Inner Voices

Finnish violinist Pekka Kuusisto is fresh from a conversation with school kids about classical music. The dialogue is one aspect of music and performance that inspires the celebrated musician who is in Australia as guest director of the Australian Chamber Orchestra for its Inner Voices tour.

"Most musicians who perform in concert halls seem to expect the world to come to us all of the time ... because we play music from a certain period," Kuusisto explains. "We have to be ready and willing to reach out to other people and offer others what we have to give."

Kuusisto brings to Australia an impressive performance history which includes an association with London, Scottish and Irish chamber orchestras, the Britten Sinfonia and stints as the artistic director of Finland's Lake Tuusula Chamber Music Festival. In 1995, Kuusisto was the first Finn to win the International Jean Sibelius Violin Competition. One of the world's top three violin competitions, it is held every five years in recognition of the composer's musical legacy in his homeland, Finland, and worldwide.

Kuusisto is known for his diverse tastes which have seen him embrace classical music as well as folk, electronic, jazz, rock and improvisional styles. He says while he has fostered diversity in his musical taste, he realises that certain genres are not for all. "(Classical) music is not for everyone. It's just in the same way some people like Rembrandt and some people like Andy Warhol," he says.

Performing with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, including a stint as guest director in the past, means Kuusisto knows exactly what to expect on this visit Down Under. He says he loves the opportunity to get into the rehearsal room with the orchestra and this time will lead the group in a Finnish inspired program. "It's a great collection of people who are really wonderful people and great musicians," he says. Kuusisto has arranged Sibelius' Voices Intimae for the performance. The orchestra will also play Bach's Violin Concerto No. 2 in E and the Brandenberg Concerto No. 3 and premiere Alakotila's Finnish Folksong Suite for Strings. Kuusisto says initially he had reservations about arranging and playing a Sibelius piece with the chamber orchestra. "That idea came from the orchestra and I was a little bit reluctant at first," he says. "But if there's one orchestra that can play the personality and intimacy of the piece in a large venue, then this is the orchestra."
KILMENY ADIE, ILLAWARRA MERCURY

Anniversary celebration came packed with surprises

BACK for another tour as guest director, Finnish violinist Pekka Kuusisto directed the Australian Chamber Orchestra on Monday night in a surprise-packed program of music by Sibelius and Bach, preceded by a bagatelle from Andrew Ford, to celebrate Richard Tognetti's 20-year stand as the ensemble's presiding genius. As things turned out, Ford's Bright Shiners contributed the evening's most novel sounds, its textural interplay making a successful bookend to a night that concluded in another world premiere, Timo Alakotila's unadventurous Sketches from Folkscenes.

Read the full article in The Age.

Folk trips of Finnish brilliance

There is a paradox at the heart of this Australian Chamber Orchestra program, a joyous celebration of the growing musical ties between Australia and Finland. The ACO already has two Finns and here they are joined by two guests, harmonium player Milla Viljamaa and guest leader Pekka Kuusisto. Part cherub, part elf, Kuusisto is relatively well known here from previous tours and as the wintry soloist in the recent film 4, of Vivaldi's Four Seasons.

Clearly the ACO adores him; audiences, too. Radiating joy and cheer, he plays with the improvisatory abandon of a folk fiddler.

Read the full article in The Australian.

An aural homecoming

Violinist Pekka Kuusisto tells Anna King Murdoch about his journey of musical self-discovery.

After becoming the first Finn to win the marathon International Jean Sibelius Violin Competition 14 years ago while still only in his teens, Pekka Kuusisto felt that something wasn't right. "I was not really happy playing and I couldn't really tell why because I was on the verge of having the kind of life I had always wanted — gorgeous concerts with great orchestras and playing the Sibelius violin concerto everywhere. I couldn't understand it myself."

Read the full article in The Age.

Learn more about Pekka Kuusisto's tour with the ACO.

Pekka Kuusisto on Sibelius and Sisu

Pekka Kuusisto, Guest Director/Violin for our Inner Voices national tour talks about Sibelius, sisu* and Finnish folk music:



*Finnish for 'guts' or 'fortitude'.

RT's Speech: Seventeen Forty Three

1743...

The third President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, was born.

Incidentally he played the violin and declared that music “is the favourite passion of my soul, and fortune has cast my lot in a country where it is in a state of deplorable barbarism.” To improve the state of music in America, Jefferson encouraged its practice, and music played an important role in the life of his family through the generations.

Born: Sir Joseph Banks, British naturalist and botanist

Born: Spencer Compton, 1st Earl of Wilmington, second Prime Minister of the UK

Died: Anna Maria Luisa de' Medici, last member of the Medici family (b. 1667)

1743 was also the year that this violin was made. It is 265 years old.

Nicknamed the Carrodus was made by Guarnieri del Gesu in Cremona, Italy. If Stradivarius was the Leonardo of violin making then del Gesu was Michelangelo. Del Gesu (of Jesus) was an irascible genius whose instruments are even more highly sought after than those of Stradivarius. This instrument is now on Australian soil and an anonymous benefactor owns it. The spine-tingling fact about this instrument (apart from its value) is that it is made from the same tree as the il Cannone which was owned by Paganini. Indeed, it’s considered feasible that this instrument was also owned by Paganini but he lost it gambling.

“His pale, long-drawn face with its hollow cheeks, his thin lips that seemed to curl into a sardonic smile, piercing expression fo his eyes which were like flaming charcoals, gave him a diabolic appearance...” The ‘nail in the coffin’, so to speak, was that Paganini refused to see a Bishop that had come to give him the final sacraments when he was on his deathbed. Paganini shooed him away, insisting he was not dying at all. When he did die, the church refused to allow him to be buried on holy ground

I am honoured to be here to address you, and indeed I have my own Davos Connection:

In 1986 on a concert tour of Europe I took myself skiing in Davos, The book I was reading at the time mysteriously and remarkably mirrored the climb my train was making out of the Rhine Gebiet up through the mountains to Zurich and onto Davos. It wasn’t until I described my encounter to an Aus. girl later that night was I made aware that unknowingly I had been living the book I was reading. Quite coincidentally I was reading the opening chapter the Arrival beautiful description of travelling up through the Swiss mountains. It was no other than Thomas Mann’s Der Zauberberg (The Magic Mountain), which is a microcosmic study of symphonic proportions of the decaying Europe below. And of course it is based in a sanatorium in Davos.

Shortly after its publication in 1924 some rather important developments were taking place in our ‘faraway land’. Dame Nellie Melba had passed away in 1931, but an even more important series of events occurred which marks to date the most important climb in the culture of Australian music known as the Heinze Era 1932-1945 which was overseen by Prime Ministers James Henry Scullin, ALP, 1929 through to John Curtin up to 1945.

A great launch pad and a very encouraging start

In a recent book by Martin Buzacott (The Rite of Spring: 75 Years of ABC Music-making, ABC Books) we can read the story of the evolution of the state symphonies we have today.

But after 76 years we’ve not expanded, not one iota. The six symphony orchestras we formed in 1932 with a population of six and a half million (now it’s 21 million) are the same and only symphony orchestras extant today. Indeed their survival is constantly threatened.

For some comparative statistics consider:

Finland, population 5.1 million: 30 professional orchestras

USA, populations 301 million: 900 amateur and 300-400 professional orchestras

Venezuela, population 27 million: 200 youth orchestras and at least 23 professional orchestras (in the 1970s there were two orchestras in Venezuela).

Quite rightly there is enormous concern about our ‘outer ecology’ as you’ve just heard from the Governor General – we’re all alarmed about the impact of global warming, but I think we also need to consider our ‘inner ecology’, where ‘cultural cooling’ is just as real a threat to our well-being.

In this country there is an enormous imbalance between sporting prowess and cultural endeavour. Consider this:

The elite arts set is viewed as a privileged few, upper echelon, crème de la crème, snobs, snoots, elitists, pretenders, egotists, stuffed shirts and Chardonnay sipping wankers. Your progeny ought to be prevented from associating with these types.

The elite sports set, on the other hand, is seen as: the best, cream o’ the crop, our heroes, the future, something to shed a tear about, our obsession, worthy of investment, winning for our country. Our kids should be encouraged to follow in their hallowed footsteps.

Incidentally, in Buzacott’s book he describes the ‘agricultural roughness’ of conductor EJ Roberts, nicknamed ‘Shellshock’ and better known as a golfer than conductor who led the National Broadcasting Symphony Orchestra at the opening ceremony for the new Australian Broadcasting Commission on 1 July 1932.

We have become used to these negative sentiments in this country and they fuel an entrenched perception that the arts are elitist, exclusive, and indeed a burden on a society which has an ever increasing challenge to contain the disparity between the haves and the have-nots. It’s a luxury handbag rather than an essential item.

To indicate how easy it is to reinforce this sentiment in Australia consider this ad brought out by the Liberal Party in 1996: “A vote for Labor is a vote for the elite arts.”

Now just for a moment consider swapping ‘elite arts’ with ‘elite sports’ or elite immigrants or kooris.

Or recently a State Premiere staked his credentials on this: “I’m not into opera, I go to the footy.”

Since when were the two mutually exclusive?

Well, I surf and I play the violin.

I’ve been asked to talk about cultural leadership and I do believe that at this point in my career, advocacy is the best form of leadership.

I don’t have much time here and I have been asked to play for you some more so I’ll cut to the chase and be specific. I’ll leave the universal to JS Bach which I’ll play at the end.

In the strongest possible terms I am advocating a national music curriculum to be advanced unencumbered by the states’ educational differences and a visionary and far-reaching cultural infrastructural program be formulated that will help spawn a new generation of Australians that is culturally adept, well informed, open minded and with good reason proud of what we do on this land rather than what we do with it. A national smartening-up, not dumbing-down. Our exemplary sporting achievements – we all know that we punch way above our weight at present we rank number five on the Olympic ladder – ought to – and can be – matched by our cultural endeavours.

Currently in Australia up to three in four children in Government Primary Schools have no music teachers. That equates to over 700,000 children missing out, and often they are the ones who need support the most.

Kim Williams, CEO of Foxtel and a passionate advocate for music education was active participant in the 2020 summit which he believes lives and continues. In a recent speech he said:

If Australia is to continue to care about and embrace the notion of egalitarian ideals as the foundation of our culture then there is much work to be done.

In my view … the quality of that system will have several absolutely fundamental tenets:

First there have to be reliable national standards and national curriculum frameworks – and that is essentially non negotiable;

2) There have to be close delivery connections to local schools and school districts including the empowerment of school principals to appoint and assess teachers so that their performance is directly accountable in the same way that performance accountability is fundamental to all modern commercial and public life;

3) A mixed system will continue but it has to be one where the resource imbalance between public and private in the interests of fairness and equity must correct the systemic distortions that have eroded public education;

4) The whole approach and attitudinal fabric to the role, remuneration, training, assessment and reinforcement of teachers requires wholesale renovation so that we capture the right talented people who make teaching their first choice of career and we ensure that it is a satisfying and fulfilling one subsequently;

5) There must be an unwavering commitment to excellence – one which ensures that the talented are encouraged and appropriately reinforced; and

Finally there must be a real commitment to the primary importance of mainstream delivery of the arts and sport from infant education on as the ying and yang essential to a fit, intellectually vigorous and well resourced nation that is healthy and empowered to confront its challenges effectively.

He goes on to say:

I think I can assume safe common territory with everyone here today in saying that Australia is imbued with an unusually talented resource of active and original creative individuals quite disproportionate to its size. However that resource has an uneven education and resource framework compromising the nation’s capacity to retain talent and drive consistent effort that evolves and improves as boldly as it must to serve the people’s best interest.

Try telling the kids of Wyong Public in NSW, that your vote could be a vote for the elite arts. Consider this:

Case Study - Wyong Public School

The Song Room a private organization whose vision whose vision statement is that all Australian children have the opportunity to participate in music and the arts to enhance their education, personal development and community involvement.

Wyong Public School Students to Learn the Violin and Increase Enrolments!

In early 2007 The Song Room secured the services of a string teacher one day a week at Wyong Public School on the Central Coast of NSW, to teach students to play the violin,

The achievements were beyond the wildest dreams of the whole school community. Only ten months after the students commenced The Song Room program, the school now has in excess of 90 students from Years 3-6 playing in a string ensemble. All of the students in these groups have had opportunities to perform, not only at the weekly school assembly, but also performing at various local Festivals. The School’s 90 violinists also featured on the local news in November showing the remarkable achievements being made by students in learning the violin in such large numbers.

Graham Holmes, Principal, Wyong Public School:

“The children of Wyong Public School largely come from backgrounds where these music and creative arts opportunities cannot normally be afforded to them. It has been through the support of The Song Room that has given these children experiences that they could have previously only stood back and watch other children enjoy. They have grown in their self esteem, in their sense of self, in their aspirational outlooks and most importantly, in their love of music and performance.”

According to Graham, music and performing arts can transform a school:

“It can be the key that unlocks the talents of children and it can play a defining role in uplifting children’s self esteem, broadening their career and personal aspirations and impressing on them that they can too reach their potential, regardless of their personal life’s circumstances.”

For one student who earlier this year had to be removed for several months to a specialist behaviour facility for seriously disruptive, and at times, violent behaviour, The Song Room program has left an indelible mark on his psyche and has set him on a life trajectory of music and performance.

From violence to violins.

There exist a few great models in the world where a good music education opens up enormous vistas and opportunities. I encourage you to examine the Finnish education system on the one hand and the world shattering success of the Venezuelan Youth Orchestra program (El Sistema) comprising street kids – certainly nothing to do with the elite except in their playing.



We need to work with the media to engage all in musical activities.

The idea of designating one Australian town or city annually to be the ‘Cultural Capital’ would serve to focus and stimulate local artists. Take for example NSW’s third largest city, Wollongong, where we find a city with a broken heart, lying supine in a cultural coma with no cultural infrastructure, except for their local theatre. The local council had recently condemned their only venue suitable for orchestral and chamber music performance, the Wollongong town hall.

Making the arts an important concern for a whole community for even just a year would have far-reaching effects in such a city, serving to generate a cultural dialogue with the rest of the country and the wider world.

Let me finish with a quote from Alan Turing the father of the computer.

If the untrained infant’s mind is to become an intelligent one, it must acquire both discipline and initiative… To convert a brain or machine into a universal machine is the most extreme form of discipline. Without something of this kind one cannot set up proper communication. But discipline is certainly not enough in itself to produce intelligence. That which is required in addition we call initiative. This statement will have to serve as a definition.

It’s no moot point that every senior secondary school student should have access to a computer at school.

So wouldn’t it be wonderful if placed next to that computer on every student’s desk were a musical instrument.

I’ll leave you with Bach’s Chaconne.

This is a transcript of a speech RT made at the Australian Davos Connection's Leadership Retreat.

John Storgårds Q&A

ACO: The music on this program will be unfamiliar to most people. What can they expect?

John Storgårds: This surely is a program of broadly unfamiliar pieces (or even composers, except Lutoslawski and of course Sibelius), but absolutely something to come and listen to. The audience can expect a nice bouquet of wonderfully colourful, communicating and exciting music of (more or less) our times.

Some audiences might approach a program of contemporary music a little nervously. What would you say to them to allay their fears? Why is it important that they hear this music?

The only important thing is to relax and open your ears. There is nothing to be afraid of in this program, also if many of the composers´ names might be totally unfamiliar and hard to pronounce… all the compositions are full of life and beauty in their own ways. And I do think there is always an important point in giving yourself a chance to listen to something you haven’t heard before, as the world is overfull of familiar music and too many boring ways of approaching it, both as a listener and sometimes performer.

What links these works together?

There is a sense of almost hypnotically rhythmical ‘flow’ in both the minimalistic piece by Juozapaitis and in the bigger Hämeenniemi work, with its improvisational elements and influences from India. Interspace by the Japanese composer Ichiyanagi is in this program concept exactly what the title of it says, as I think in a beautiful way, and the great Lutoslawski work simply has everything in itself, in an absolutely gripping and most communicative way. The little Sibelius piece at the end functions actually already as a nice traditional encore.

Eero Hämmenniemi’s Chamber Concerto instructs the soloist (and at one point the whole orchestra) to improvise. Is this confronting for a classically-trained musician? How do you approach pieces like this?

First of all I think classically-trained musicians – as any possible musicians – should definitely have a natural ability to improvise, with or without ‘composed’ rules. Something goes totally wrong in such classical education which takes this kind of music making away from you, and sadly this is still often exactly what happens in too many kinds of ‘serious classical education’. If you look at the history of classical music, improvisation has always been a major part of it all, except for some sequences of the 19th and 20th centuries. My Finnish close colleague Eero Hämeenniemi gives certain rules and scales to elaborate with for the improvisational parts of his Chamber Concerto, as does also Lutoslawski in Preludes and Fugue in a slightly more controlled way! Actually Hämeenniemi advises (in the score) that finally the answer to all questions of “am I allowed to?” is “Yes, you are.”

What inspired you to become a conductor? How is the experience of conducting different to being a violin soloist?

I feel myself as a fullblood-musician, and that’s what I want to stay for the future too. Conducting is nowadays a big bit of it all, but this definitely also goes for playing, especially as a chamber musician. Being a soloist is not that important, but I enjoy it as long as it feels possible to do it on top level. I never planned to become a conductor, it really just happened little by little, and when it did, I also went through serious studies in that field, not wanting to become one of all these great instrumentalists who are conducting as bad amateurs, no matter how interesting they are musically. Now I feel that I’m still developing both as a violinist and as a conductor, on proper grounds, and, above all, being a musician.

There are 30 professional orchestras in Finland (pop. 5.3 million), in Australia (pop. 20 million) there are nine. What can Australia learn from Finland about creating a more vibrant musical culture?

I don’t know enough of the differences between Finnish and Australian music education to really answer this. I do think that Finland really has achieved a lot of wonderful and high level things in the music field, as a result of effective education systems and also in some great individuals. But I’m as worried about the future there as anywhere, because of the increasing stupidity and overall wrong priority thinking among top politicians and media of today. Rebelliousness among artists, musicians, writers, intellectuals and any independently thinking people is as much needed today as ever!