France Musique , what will I do tomorrow night ? Listen to the stupendous Sibelius 'Luonnotar'at 8pm 'Le Concert du Soir'

Sibelius et Chostakovitch par Karita Mattila et l'Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France

[son 3D] Sous la conduite de son chef Mikko Franck, l'OPRF interprète en direct de l'Auditorium de Radio France les oeuvres de Jean Sibelius : Tapiola et, en compagnie de la soprano Karita Mattila, Luonnotar. Après une pause réparatrice, ils interpréteront la Première Symphonie de Chostakovitch.

Karita Mattila, © Getty / Terry O'Neill

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Pour des raisons contractuelles, ce concert sera proposé à la réécoute sur cette page durant 1 mois.
Présentation : Odile Sambe de Ricaud

Programme du concert :

Jean Sibelius
Tapiola op 112, poème symphonique
Jean Sibelius
Luonnotar op.70, poème pour soprano et orchestre
Karita Mattila, soprano
Bis Karita Mattila :
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ah perfido !
Karita Mattila, soprano
Dimitri Chostakovitch
Symphonie n°1
Karita Mattila, soprano
Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France
Mikko Franck direction

L'équipe de l'émission :

• Odile Sambe de RicaudProduction
• From the web pdf which is part of a Boston Symphony Orchestra programme, written by Mark Mandel, these are the best comments  and most complete ones I found  about this tone poem which I loved the first time I listened to it after my travel to Finland and the journey to Ainola.
• "" quote 
  Jean Sibelius
  “Luonnotar,” Tone poem, Opus 70, for soprano and orchestra
  JEAN (JOHAN JULIUS CHRISTIAN) SIBELIUS was born at Hämeenlinna (Tavestehus in Swedish), Finland, on December 8, 1865, and died at Järvenpää, near Helsingfors (Helsinki), on September 20, 1957. He composed “Luonnotar” between mid-July and mid-August 1913 for the soprano Aino Ackté, who sang the first performance on September 10 that year at the Gloucester Festival in England, as detailed below.
  IN ADDITION TO THE SOPRANO SOLOIST, the score of “Luonnotar” calls for an orchestra of two flutes and piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets and bass clarinet, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani (two players), two harps, and strings.
  Sibelius took inspiration for his music from several sources, among them nature in general and the elemental landscape of his native Finland (about which, see the program note on his Symphony No. 6 beginning on page 49 of this program book). Another important source of inspiration was the Kalevala, the so-called “Finnish national epic” that enshrines his country’s lore and mythology.
  The Kalevala is a conflation of Finnish folk tales, lyrics, narrative, and magic charms that was actually compiled in 1835 after extensive field research by Elias Lönnrot and then expanded to twice its original length fourteen years later by Lönnrot and David Europaeus. It served Sibelius well on numerous occasions. It was with the premiere in Helsinki on April 28, 1892, of his Kullervo for soloists, male chorus, and orchestra—a seventy-five-minute “symphonic poem” based on the exploits of Kullervo, one of the Kalevala’s four main heroes—that the twenty-six-year-old composer secured his reputation in his native land. His Four Legends from the “Kalevala” (composed 1893-96, including most famously The Swan of Tuonela), a set of four symphonic poems for orchestra alone, were inspired by the exploits of another Kalevala hero, Lemminkäinen, as was the “symphonic fantasia” for orchestra, Pohjola’s Daughter (1906). (The Kalevala’s other two main heroes are Väinämöinen, of whom more below, and Ilmarinen.)
  Unlike these other works, Luonnotar, Sibelius’s extraordinary tone poem for orchestra and soprano, is based not on heroic exploits, but on the creation myth as recounted in the Kalevala’s first canto. Sibelius wrote this work for the Finnish soprano Aino Ackté (1876-1944), who sang at the Met, the Paris Opera, and Covent Garden (and who, incidentally, between 1912 and 1916, was the first to oversee the staging of operas at what is now the site of the modern Savonlinna Opera Festival some 200 miles from Helsinki). In 1911, Sibelius canceled a planned concert tour in Germany with the soprano; for that tour he had promised to write, at her urging, a new orchestral song based on Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven, which he was to have conducted along with other works of his own. (Some of the music conceived for that unfinished project ended up in his Fourth Symphony, work on which was one reason he ultimately canceled the tour—another being his pique at the soprano’s promotional campaign for the tour, which he viewed as too self-centered on her part.) As a result, in 1913, when Ackté requested from him a new work for soprano and orchestra that she could pair on programs with the final scene from Strauss’s Salome, he effectively “owed” her. He began sketching Luonnotar in mid-July and by mid-August sent her a score; she declared the new work “brilliant and magnificent” but also “madly difficult” given the intricacies of the vocal writing (“my otherwise sure sense of pitch may fail me”). Though it was an engagement for concerts that fall in Manchester that had prompted her to request the new work, it was at the Gloucester Festival on September 10, 1913, that she sang the premiere.
  Sibelius’s version of the creation myth as he has excerpted and condensed it for Luonnotar from the Kalevala is elliptical at best; so one needs first to know the basics of the story. Luonnotar, “Daughter of the Heavens” (also known as Ilmatar, “Spirit of the Air”), comes down to the sea, where she becomes “Mother of the Water.” A bird variously described in different English translations as a gull, teal, or goldeneye alights and nests on Luonnotar’s knee as she drifts upon the waters. Ultimately the bird’s eggs roll from the nest and break into pieces, from which are formed the earth, heavens, sun, moon, and clouds. Luonnotar next creates a variety of geographic formations (bays, shores, shoals,
  and the like), and then, after a gestation period of thirty years, gives birth to Väinämöinen (who, having lost patience during this extended process, finally forces himself from his mother’s womb). Väinämöinen is the hero whose adventures then take up the first main portion of the Kalevala.
  In less than ten minutes of visionary music, Sibelius’s Luonnotar encompasses the creation of a world. Through his skillful manipulation of general tension level, harmonic dissonance, and instrumentation, the composer is able unfailingly to suggest the primeval, mysterious atmosphere of a world yet unformed. As his version of the story begins, Luonnotar—“Air’s young daughter, a virgin”—descends upon the waters from “those far-extending deserts of the air”; she drifts, frustratingly, for centuries, then swims “in all directions.” The soprano soloist relates this in two brief, bardic, narrative-style stanzas over the sparest possible—yet uniquely colorful— accompaniment from the orchestra. Harp and timpani herald “a sudden mighty tempest”; the vocal line extends upward. Now Luonnotar’s “wretched fortune” and frustration at leaving air’s realm are conveyed through repetitions of a slow-moving sigh-motif on which her text-syllables are stretched. Next the orchestra—beginning with the rustling string music that opened the piece—anticipates the arrival of the teal (descending woodwind flutters reflect the bird’s flight and descent). Three extended “No!”s (“Ei! Ei! Ei!”) capture the bird’s concern over choosing a safe nesting place. Here again we get that haunting sigh-motif. The third “No!,” pianissimo in the soprano’s highest register, provides one of the most extraordinarily evocative echo-effects to be found in music: one can’t help but sense the enormity of the universe. The teal’s continued expressions of concern carry this central section of the piece to its climax.
  As we learn through music that once more turns spare, archetypal, and bardic, the bird finds protection from the billows and winds by nesting on Luonnotar’s knee, which the Mother of the Water has lifted above the water’s surface. A burning sensation causes Luonnotar’s limbs to shake convulsively. The eggs fall into the water and break. From the upper fragment of one egg rise the heavens and moon. From “all that in the egg was mottled” come the stars of heaven. Alternating, dissonance-tinged harp chords heard against repeated timpani rolls and sustained strings provide an atmosphere of primeval mystery. The stars appear. Dark becomes light.
  Marc Mandel
  MARC MANDEL is Director of Program Publications of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
  THE BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA has played just one previous performance of Sibelius’s “Luonnotar,” on August 10, 2002, at Tanglewood with soloist Karita Mattila under the direction of Osmo Vänskä.
  JEAN SIBELIUS
  “Luonnotar,” Opus 70, for soprano and orchestra
  (English version after W.F. Kirby’s translation of the Kalevala)

  Olipa impi ilman tyttö, kave Luonnotar korea, ouostoi elämätään, aina yksin ollessansa, avaroilla autioilla.
  Laskeusi lainehille, aalto impeä ajeli, vuotta seitsemänsataa vieri impi veen emona, uipi luotehet,
  etelät, uipi kaikki ilman rannat.

  Air’s young daughter was a virgin, Fairest daughter of creation.
  Long did she abide a virgin, Dwelling ever more so lonely
  In those far-extending deserts.
  After this the maid descending Sank upon the tossing billows, Seven long centuries together. Then she swam, the Water-Mother Southward swam and swam to northwest,
  Swam around in all directions.
  Tuli suuri tuulenpuuska, meren kuohuille kohotti. “Voi poloinen päiviäni! Parempi olisi ollut ilman impenä elää.
  Oi Ukko ylijumala! Käy tänne kutsuttaissa!”
  Tuli sotka suora lintu, lenti kaikki ilman rannat, lenti luotehet, etelät;
  ei löyä pesän sioa.
  “Ei! Ei! Ei!
  Teenkö tuulehen tupani, aalloillen asuinsiani,
  tuuli kaatavi, tuuli kaatavi, aalto viepi asuin sijani!”
  Niin silloin veen emonen nosti polvea lainehasta, siihen sorsa laativi pesänsä; alkoi hautoa.
  Impi tuntevi tulistuvaksi. Järskytti jäsenehensä.
  Pesä vierähti vetehen.
  Katkieli kappaleiksi. Muuttuivat munat kaunoisiksi. Munasen yläinen puoli yläuseksi taivahaksi,
  yläpuoli valkeaista,
  kuuksi kumottamahan,
  mi kirjavaista, tähiksi taivaalle; ne tähiksi taivaalle.

  Then a sudden mighty tempest Drove the billows of the waters. “Oh how wretched is my fortune Better were it I had tarried Virgin in the airy regions,
  Ukko, thou of Gods the highest Hasten here for thou art needed.”
  Then a beauteous teal came flying Flew round in all directions, Southward flew and flew to northwest, Searching for a spot to rest in.
  “No! No! No!
  Should I make the wind my dwelling, Should I rest it on the billows,
  Then the winds will overturn it,
  Or the waves will sweep it from me.”
  Then the Mother of the Waters
  From the waves her knee uplifted; Gentle there the teal alighting
  So she might her nest establish.
  Then the maiden felt a burning
  And her limbs’ convulsive shaking, Rolled the eggs into the water,
  And to splinters they were broken, And to fragments they were shattered. From the cracked egg’s upper fragment Rose the lofty arch of heaven,
  From the white the upper fragment Rose the moon that shines so brightly; All that in the egg was mottled
  Now became the stars in heaven. "" (end of qute)
  
  
  

  
  
  Many thanks to  Operazalle for this amazing upload.