NAC STRIKES A NORDIC NOTE
Ideas of North Festival focuses on Finland
With three-quarters of 2017 over, perhaps you’ve put Canada’s sesquicentennial behind you. Well, not so fast. Plus, there’s another big birthday for another country to mark, namely the 100th anniversary of Finland’s independence.
From Oct. 3 to 14, the National Arts Centre will mark both milestones with its Ideas of North Festival, a mix of events using many of the new spaces in the renovated NAC, including orchestral and small ensemble classical concerts, shows by singer-songwriters, performances by an acclaimed Finnish modern dance company, post-concert parties, family days, a special menu at Le Café, the NAC’s restaurant, chats on Nordic architecture, and more.
NAC Orchestra music director Alexander Shelley says this year’s NAC fall festival has been in the works for almost two years. The topic broadened to cultural commonalities that Canada and northern European nations might share, “whether one could put one’s finger on influences of the north on the music, on the art, on the architecture of the Nordic countries,” Shelley says. “It’s in a festival context that you can actually dig into these questions and everybody who attends can answer the questions for themselves.”
Central to the festival is music by the revered Finnish composer Jean Sibelius, who is credited with having helped Finland to develop a national identity during its struggle for independence from Russia.
Sibelius’s prodigious output includes seven symphonies and the Ideas of North Festival will prominently feature four of them, in chronological order.
“I find it deeply moving music,” Shelley says. “It’s also a frankly unique symphonic language, something that I wanted to explore with the orchestra as part of our artistic development together, but also with the audience.”
Sibelius, who was able to compress the “emotional, philosophical journey” of his music so his final symphony was just half as long as his first one, crafted “very evocative music, music that concisely encapsulates the human condition,” Shelley says.
Sibelius himself said “his works were like putting together a mosaic,” Shelley says.
“You will hear an idea of incredible beauty, but only for a fleeting second. Then you can hear how emotionally you’re trying to return to that idea, you’re trying to find fulfilment. It feels like a process of yearning, often in his symphonic works.
“In almost every one, there will be a moment maybe four-fifths way through the piece when suddenly it appears, that idea … it is generally a sensation of hope, or even fulfilment. There’s something deeply gratifying that’s happened, we’ve been on a collective search for it. But almost as quickly as he presents it to you, this solution, this moment of beauty, this arrival, it dissipates again.
“I find, and I mean this in a very positive sense, his symphonies leave you with an almost painful sense of longing, You remember the beauty that was so briefly presented to you.”
Shelley will conduct the festival’s opening concert Oct. 3, during which the program will include NACO performing Sibelius’s first symphony. On Oct. 5, Hannu Lintu, chief conductor of the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, will lead NACO when it performs Sibelius’s Symphony No. 2 and other works.
The festival’s final concert on Oct. 14 will feature Shelley conducting when the orchestra plays Sibelius’s fifth and seventh symphonies. Throughout the festival, the work and life of Sibelius will also be featured in the banners and videos of an exhibit in the NAC’s Canal Foyer.
In addition to Lintu, Finnish violinist and conductor John Storgårds will appear at the festival, conducting NACO on Oct. 11 during a night of music featuring Finnish soprano Helena Juntunen. The next night, Storgårds will lead the Lapland Chamber Orchestra, for which he is the music director, during its first North American concert.
Storgårds will also play violin at the Oct. 14 festival closer, performing a violin concerto by Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho with NACO. Shelley says he pleased that Storgårds will have a nice run of performances in Ottawa. “I can’t wait,” he says. “Conductors never get to hang out with each other.”
The festival will also feature performances of new music, including the Oct. 5 world premiere of the piano concerto Nameless Seas, featuring Ottawa’s Angela Hewitt at the piano. The piece was written for her by Ottawa-born composer Matthew Whittall, who now lives in Finland.
The Oct. 12 Lapland Chamber Orchestra concert will feature the world premiere of Canadian choreographer Michael Greyeyes’ dance piece based on the late Canadian composer Claude Vivier’s Zipangu. The Oct. 3 concert will feature one of the inaugural performances of Canadian composer Alexina Louie’s Triple Concerto, featuring NAC concertmaster Yosuke Kawasaki.
Also travelling to Ottawa from Helsinki is the celebrated and eclectic a cappella group Rajaton, whose name means “boundless” in Finnish and whose repertoire ranges from sacred classical music to pop, jazz and folk. Its members will harmonize in Southam Hall Oct. 6.
Beyond music, the Helsinki-based Tero Saarinen Company will dance its vigorous all-male contemporary dance work Morphed Oct. 4 and 5 in the NAC’s Babs Asper Theatre.
Two Canadian acts, the Ottawa Indigenous folk duo Twin Flames and Swedish-born, Whitehorse based Sarah MacDougall, will appear under the festival’s umbrella, on Oct. 8 on the NAC’s Canal Lobby Stage and Oct. 10 in the NAC Fourth Stage respectively.
Although the festival is yet to begin, Shelley says it could well provide the blueprint for similar fall festivals at the NAC.
“We’ve already ascertained during our work on this festival that this is a brand we may well revisit,” he says. “It’s very rich. There’s a lot of repertory. I think we are very well suited to it, being a Nordic capital. The idea of having a festival, perhaps every couple years, where we build relationships with other Nordic centres, is great.” phum@postmedia.com