Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony

Within sight of her own death in 2023, the Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho strived to finish what she knew would be her last work: the trumpet concerto HUSH. This score of flickering intensity, whose music one critic described as being ‘inked into the silence,’ was the composer’s farewell to the world to which she brought such a distinctive form of musical beauty.

Verneri Pohjola, for whom the concerto was written, is the soloist in this Norwegian premiere of HUSH, which comes between music altogether more familiar. Osmo Vänskä is associated with Sibelius and Beethoven more than any other composers, and on this visit to Bergen he brings us both - from the mysterious moonlit lake of Sibelius’s The Swan of Tuonela to Beethoven’s return to the vigour of the outdoors in his Pastoral Symphony - a celebration of the joyous abandon of childhood and a thanksgiving for the wonders of the Earth.

Photo: Teemu Kuusimurto