The Avanti! Chamber Orchestra: Rituals

Event Introduction

The Avanti! Chamber Orchestra sets Musica nova in motion with a programme that leads the listener to the world of ritual. The soloist is Tuuli Lindeberg, Artistic Director of Musica nova Helsinki and an Avanti! partner for many years.

Concerts are in themselves very ritual experiences – they observe set schemes and routines. Avanti! violates the customary rituals even before the concert begins, when Hälytyskellot (Alarm Bells, 2021) by Tytti Arola gets its first Helsinki hearing in a joint Avanti! and Musica nova effort. The jingle bells usher the audience to their seats in Helsinki Cathedral and heighten their senses ready for the concert.

Virtually no music by Italian-born composer Silvia Borzelli has been performed in Finland before. She examines the relationship between music and context. The Avanti! concert will perform her Polar (2017) and two movements from 4 amazing stories (2012–2013).

Only once before has Gérard Grisey’s Quatre chants pour franchir le seuil (Four Songs to Cross the Threshold, 1999) been performed in Finland, at Avanti’s Summer Sounds festival in 2006. The soloist in this work shimmering in all the shades of the sound spectrum and now to be heard at the opening concert of Musica nova Helsinki 2025 is the magnificent Tuuli Lindeberg. The work is often associated with death and the end of life, again two of the most powerful rites. This time the concert’s closing number nevertheless leads the audience to the festival’s themes, to sink into its magical atmosphere and to open up the senses to Musica nova.

Programme:

Tytti Arola (*1990): Hälytyskellot (2021)

Silvia Borzelli (*1978):
4 amazing stories (2012-2013)
1 – and so it begins
Polar (2017)
4 amazing stories
3 – twenty miles

Gérard Grisey (1946–1998): Quatre chants pour franchir le seuil (1999)

Performers:

Kamariorkesteri Avanti!
Peter Rundel, conductor
Tuuli Lindeberg, soprano

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