Meet Jakob Lehmann

The up-and-coming conductor, Rossini specialist and expert in historical performance practice, Jakob Lehmann, is making his debut with the Musikkollegium. Following two subscription concerts, he will now take to the stage on Friday evening with a programme devoted entirely to the Finnish national composer Jean Sibelius. The first piece of the evening, the ‘Cassazione’, was composed in 1904 as a stopgap for a composition concert. The title refers to the cassazione, a genre similar to the serenade that was popular in the second half of the 18th century. Sibelius revised the piece several times, but remained dissatisfied – “Bör omarbetas” (“should be revised”), he noted laconically in 1905. Unpublished during his lifetime, the “Cassazione” fell into oblivion and remains one of the Finnish composer’s less frequently performed works to this day. Quite unlike his Fifth Symphony: With its final melody, as memorable as it is powerful – for which Sibelius is said to have been inspired by the flight of swans – it ranks among his most popular orchestral works. Speaking of swans: ‘The Swan of Tuonela’ features a very special specimen, namely the mystical swan from the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala, which circles the island of the dead, Tuonela. Sibelius originally conceived the piece as an overture to an opera in the style of Wagner. Although the opera never came to fruition, he used the themes he had already composed for it to create the Lemminkäinen Suite, named after the womaniser from the Kalevala. Which swan Jakob Lehmann prefers – you might find out during the artist talk in the foyer after the concert!