Stewart first met Salonen, who is internationally celebrated for both his composition and conducting, when Stewart served as his assistant conductor with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl in 2013. But he’d been familiar with Salonen’s Nyx since 2011, when he worked on the U.S. premiere of the work at Carnegie Hall with the Atlanta Symphony. "I instantly found, and still find it to be a wildly compelling, exciting, and endlessly fascinating work. One of my very favorite pieces of contemporary art," says Stewart.
Here we have another tone poem, this one evoking Nyx, the Greek goddess of night. For Stewart, "the pervasive element in Nyx is an overarching sense of mystery, punctuated by episodes of extreme sensuality, strength, and agility." Salonen describes the piece as full of "spaces—musical spaces which the listener wanders in between," with plenty of room for interpretation about where this shadowy goddess might be heard.
Jean Sibelius was rising to international prominence in the early 20th century as Finland struggled for independence from Russia, and in the aftermath he helped shape a new national identity through his music, particularly his Fifth Symphony. According to Stewart, "the personal perspective is far more removed from the Fifth Symphony, and replaced with an ever stronger sense of Zen-like removal from human narrative; an objective, yet emotionally resonant perspective on Nature and her myriad rhythms, courses, and processes."
Nature figures heavily in Sibelius’ inspiration for the most iconic theme of the symphony: an endless ostinato, continually repeated in the brass. He wrote in his diary, "Today at ten to eleven I saw 16 swans. One of my greatest experiences! Lord God, what beauty! They circled over me for a long time. Disappeared into the solar haze like a gleaming silver ribbon. Their call the same woodwind type as that of cranes, but without tremolo...A low-pitched refrain reminiscent of a small child crying. Nature mysticism and life’s angst! The Fifth Symphony’s finale-theme: legato in the trumpets!"
You can hear to the full musical program here and then experience it live as we kick off our 2017–2018 season with Obsidian Tear, Nov 3–12.