PAAVALI

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN String Quartet No. 11 in F minor, Op.95

GRAZNYA BACEWICZ Piano Quintet No.1 ^

DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH Piano Quintet in G minor, Op.57 ^

^ These works comprise the St Johns Southgate 60 min concert program

ST JOHNS SOUTHGATE • THURSDAY 15 MAY, 1PM BOOKINGS
(approx 60 min performance, plus post-concert Q&A)

ST JOHN’S CHURCH, FLINDERS • SATURDAY 17 MAY, 2.30PM BOOKINGS
(approx 120 min performance, including interval)

MONTSALVAT BARN GALLERY • SUNDAY 18 MAY, 2.30PM BOOKINGS
(approx 120 min performance, including interval)

PRIMROSE POTTER SALON • MONDAY 19 MAY, 7PM BOOKINGS
(approx 120 min performance, including interval)

Visit FQ Digital to relive the works in this concert program, as well as bonus FQ Discover videos.

“Usually, our programs come about because we want to play the music of specific composers but in the case of this program, it was a performer that was the catalyst. Melbourne has been lucky to have extraordinary pianist, Paavali Jumppanen, in our musical community as Artistic Director at ANAM and we really wanted to play with him, and not just one piano quintet but two! Both Grazyna Bacewicz and Dmitri Shostakovich were accomplished pianists themselves and Bacewicz was also a violin virtuoso, incidentally. I’m looking forward to exploring her music for the first time and discovering how her deep knowledge of the instruments as a performer shows itself in her writing. Shostakovich was so busy performing his popular new piano quintet on tour with his friends of the Beethoven Quartet following its premiere in November 1940 that he hardly had time to compose for six months.

What better way to set up this wonderful piano feast than with Beethoven’s short but powerful Op. 95 F minor quartet “Serioso”, the only one he named himself. Written at a time of personal despair over a failed love affair, worsening deafness, poor health and financial insecurity, it’s not a stretch to hear wild fury and outrage in its opening declaratory bar. I can’t wait for our inevitable confrontation with his metronome mark for the first movement which is so fast as to make it practically unplayable. I remember an excellent quartet presenting this work at MICMC years ago pretty much at Beethoven’s speeds and causing great controversy on the jury.”

WILMA SMITH, VIOLIN

PAAVALI JUMPPANEN • piano

In the span of recent seasons, the imaginative and versatile Finnish virtuoso Paavali Jumppanen has established himself as a dynamic musician of seemingly unlimited capability who has already cut a wide swath internationally as an orchestral and recital soloist, recording artist, artistic director, and frequent performer of contemporary and avant-garde music.

Mr. Jumppanen has performed extensively in the United States, Europe, Japan, China, and Australia and collaborated with great conductors including David Robertson, Sakari Oramo, Susanna Mälkki, Esa-Pekka Salonen, and Jaap van Zweden. He has commissioned numerous works and collaborated with the composers Boulez, Murail, Dutilleux, and Penderecki. The Boston Globe praised the “overflowing energy of his musicianship” and The New York Times cited his “power and an extraordinary range of colors.”

In the recent years Paavali Jumppanen has dedicated much of his time to performing cycles of the complete Beethoven and Mozart piano sonatas. He has frequently performed all of Beethoven’s piano concertos and chamber sonatas. He attended the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki and later worked with Krystian Zimerman at the Basel Music Academy in Switzerland where he also studied organ, fortepiano, and clavichord. Russian born pianist Konstantin Bogino has remained an important mentor throughout his career.

Mr. Jumppanen’s expanding discography includes “the best recorded disc of Boulez’s piano music so far” (the Guardian writing about the three sonatas recorded on a DGG disc made at the composer’s request) and the complete Beethoven Piano Sonatas on Ondine.  He spent the 2011–12 season as a visiting scholar in Harvard University’s Music Department studying musicology and theory to deepen his immersion in Viennese 18th century music. He leads curation at the Väyläfestival, a multi-arts festival in northern Scandinavia and serves as the Artistic Director to the Australian National Academy of Music.