(violin music)
- My name is Pekka Kuusisto
and I consider myself a musician.
My family are completely musical.
My dad, I guess, first and foremost, he's a composer,
but he's kind of tried everything.
My mom is a music teacher.
My brother is a violinist, composer, conductor.
He started playing violin when he was four,
so when I was around one.
It was hard to avoid becoming a musician.
And I'm happy I didn't succeed in avoiding it.
A concert has an energy that when you are able to handle it
in a nice way,
when you're sort of at peace with yourself
and with the situation
it's possible sometimes in concerts to make decisions
that kind of wouldn't come to you in a rehearsal situation,
or when you're just studying the score,
something happens, the spirit moves you,
and suddenly something feels like a grand idea.
And then sometimes it really clicks
and you get everyone on board with the idea
before it even happens.
Like you manage to do either by choice or involuntarily
a gesture, a body movement,
that causes everyone to understand
that something is about to happen.
And, you know, the more you know the people you play with
the further you can take the situation.
If you listen to great jazz groups
or great traditional music groups
that have played together for decades,
you hear it instantly.
And to just kind of be able to decide on the frame
and kind of the scope, the scale of what you're doing.
Are you working on tiny details
or are you painting entire landscapes
with a massive big brush.
In something like Four Seasons, for example,
everyone in the orchestra will know how it goes.
So that's a benefit.
In some situations it can be a bit of a curse as well,
because if you've played it a thousand times,
it might be more difficult to look at it with fresh...
Look at it with fresh ears.
But with the Philharmonia, there is not any risk
of it sort of not becoming airborne,
if you know what I mean.
You know, at the time of this interview,
I don't know exactly the personnel of the orchestra
who are going to be there,
but I know certain people might be there.
And I know that there might be a little wink here and there.
I know my friend Ale
is going to play continuo on a cittern,
and there's going to be a lot of giving and taking of ideas.
I think there might be some things
that may seem a little bit criminal at first to us
when we're rehearsing it.
But I suppose it's just about seeing that, you know,
seeing the big picture of the performance
and deciding what fits in and what doesn't, and leaving...
Not agreeing, not sort of designing the performance too much
just designing the language of the performance
and then stretching it as much as it feels
like it needs to be stretched.
(violin music)
To find an approach for Four Seasons
is, I suppose, a little bit complicated.
It's a very good opportunity
to think that maybe I'm not right.
I find those moments quite often,
but it's very easy to have a super strong view
about how it should be done,
yet this is not in a museum this is like super active,
explosive, aggressive music,
sometimes it needs to be exactly that.
If it would be possible to measure
what people expect stylistically,
my guess, is that something rather round and soft, gentle,
is still what most people think Vivaldi should sound like.
And who am I to say that's wrong?
Then again, I can only play it convincingly
the way I think and feel it.
I tried to do my homework
relating to the historically informed performance movement.
I tried to think, would Vivaldi want me to try to imitate
what they did back then?
Probably not.
Would he appreciate me playing
with not gut strings on my violin?
Who knows?
Would he ever expect it to be played in Royal Festival Hall
for a couple of thousand people?
Certainly not.
If he would be aware that it's being played in public
for a paying audience in 2021,
would he mind people doing experimental things with it?
I'm pretty sure he would be fine.
One of the fun things in this particular performance
of Four Seasons is that our continuo player
is not playing harpsichord or lute,
he's playing an instrument called cittern,
I think it's a Renaissance strummed, plucked instrument.
And he comes from a traditional music point of view.
His name is Ale Carr
and it's really fascinating talking to him about it,
because he's approaching it through dance.
We are also planning to maybe bring in some tunes...
There's a lovely...
(Pekka whistling)
This is a Swedish triplet polska from Åre.
And Åre is a beautiful mountain range,
which happens to be, I think,
the most popular ski resort in Sweden.
So maybe that, we could bring that in
somewhere before the Winter concerto starts,
or maybe before the second movement of Winter,
because in the second movement
you're sort of sitting by the fireplace.
It's like a Vivaldi's after-ski...
(Pekka chuckles)
...after-ski movement.
And there's,
(singing in Finnish)
(speaking in Finnish)
It's a Finnish song
about just it being a beautiful summer evening.
Maybe we'll do something like that.
We can look a little bit
in the Nordic traditional music resource
and see if we could find something
that we could bring in that Vivaldi would like.
We'll see.
(violin music)