Jakob Lehmann conducts Sibelius

Two debuts, a world premiere, a farewell and powerful music from Finland: the penultimate subscription concert of the season offers all this and more. Conductor Jakob Lehmann, who has made a name for himself with his historically informed performance practice, is a guest with the Musikkollegium Winterthur for the first time. The programme features not Gioacchino Rossini, whose oeuvre is his speciality, but two works by the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius.
Sibelius wrote the ‘Cassazione’ in 1904 as a stopgap for a composition concert, but drew on significantly older material for it. Sibelius revised the piece several times, yet remained dissatisfied – ‘Bör omarbetas’ (‘should be revised’), he noted laconically as late as 1905. Unpublished during his lifetime, the “Cassazione” fell into obscurity and remains one of the Finnish composer’s less frequently performed works to this day. Quite unlike his Fifth Symphony: with its memorable and powerful final melody – for which Sibelius is said to have been inspired by the flight of swans – it ranks among his most popular orchestral works.
But back to the premieres: also to be heard for the first time in Winterthur is a work by the Zurich composer and flautist Philippe Racine. Commissioned by the Musikkollegium Winterthur, he wrote a concerto for viola and orchestra. The solo part in this world premiere will be performed by Jürg Dähler, long-standing principal violist, who is retiring from active orchestral service with this concert.