Violinist and conductor Pekka Kuusisto calls in sick for the rest of 2022 -- but we get to hear him play Ives anyway

Violinist-conductor Pekka K. posted this Facebook announcement Tuesday -- one of the more human (and humane) uses of social media I've encountered.

by Ken

And on Wednesday, when The Strad passed along to its e-mail list Pekka K.'s announcement that he's calling in sick, some background was filled in about his "busy" 2022. There's been a lot of the good kind of busyness on multiple professional fronts: "In addition to violin performance engagements including at the BBC Proms, [he] was named principal guest conductor and artistic co-director at the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra." Then there was busyness of the pretty awful kind: "In his personal life, cancer claimed both his mother and his brother Jaakko within two months in the spring of 2022."

Yikes! Makes you wonder whether the mere five weeks or so he's carved out, which of course includes the holidays, when you figure he may not have been that heavily booked, is enough of a breather, especially when you consider the moving and shaking he had to do to get his sick leave.


IT SO HAPPENS THAT PEKKA K. WAS ALREADY
LURKING IN THE SUNDAY CLASSICS PILE-UP

He's not an artist I was wildly familiar with, so the name popped out at me. Readers with long and insistent memories will recall that among the many projects we're in the midst of is one devoted to the music of Charles Ives. I've mentioned that we're working up to some sort of emponderment of the Piano Sonata No. 2, aka the Concord. But among the works I've been mulling for inclusion are the violin sonatas, and one of the, er, artifacts buried in the contemplation pile is a CD that straddles the two. The shorter work on the disc is the last and best-known of the violin sonatas, titled Children's Day at the Camp Meeting, played by Pekka K. with pianist Joonas Ahonen accompanying. In much the larger work, Joonas A. takes center stage playing none other than the Concord Sonatas, with Pekka K. contributing the optional violin obbligatos.

I can't help thinking that Chas. Ives, wherever he is, would be tickled to know that his music is now being performed and recorded, by fine Finnish musicians, in as far-flung a location as the Sellosali in Espoo, Finland's second city. I didn't even know that Espoo is Finland's second city (I don't know what I thought Finland's second city might be, but it wasn't Espoo), and it doesn't come as a total shock to learn that it's actually part of the "Greater Helsinki" area, and was only incorporated as a city in 1972. Still, its 2022 population is estimated at 300K, and that's a decent chunk of the total Finnish population. (A query to Google produced a surprisingly exact guestimate: "The current population of Finland is 5,561,298 as of Friday, November 25, 2022, based on Worldometer elaboration of the latest United Nations data.")

In case you were wondering, even as far as time and temperature information, which I assume are particular to the moment I lodged my inquiry:

Britannica places Espoo for us with some descriptive flair:

Espoo, Swedish Esbo, city, southern Finland, just west of Helsinki, in a region of broad, flat valleys covered with low clay hills. It is located in an area that has been inhabited since 3500 bc. The city has railway connections to Helsinki and the remainder of Finland. It is a thriving technology centre where over 200 international corporations have established operations for the region. Notable buildings include a church dating from 1458 and the castle-like studio of the artist Akseli Gallen-Kallela, constructed in 1911–13 and now the Tarvaspää Museum. Espoo is also the location of the Helsinki University of Technology (1908). Pop. (2021 est.) 297,132.

Not mentioned among the "notable buildings" is the venue where our recording was made, the Sellosali, or Selli Hall, located in the Shopping Center Sello Shopping Center ("one of the largest and most popular shopping centers in the Nordics," where "over 170 stores, including more than 30 restaurants, are ready to serve you").


OH YES, THE MUSIC!

I thought this might be a good place to slip in some other performances of the Ives Fourth Violin Sonata for comparative listening. Then I thought maybe not.

IVES: Violin Sonata No. 4, Children's Day at the Camp Meeting

i. Allegro; ii. Largo [at 2:18]; iii. Allegro [at 9:34]


Pekka Kuusisto, violin; Joonas Ahonen, piano. BIS, recorded June-July 2016 in Sellosali, Espoo, Finland

COMING SHORTLY, BUT NOT QUITE READY

Promised follow-up, with the working title:
"When you think 'Schubert Serenade,' isn't this the one you think of?"

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