Tonight's concert will be recorded by NPO Radio 4 and broadcast on Tuesday Dec. 20 in the Evening Concert starting at 8 p.m. 

Residentie Orkest The Hague 

Anja Bihlmaier, conductor 

Stefan Jackiw, violin 

Calliope Tsoupaki (1963) 

Perasma (2022) 

Jean Sibelius (1865-1957) 

Violin Concerto in d, op.47 (1904-1905) 

• Allegro moderato 

• Adagio di molto 

• Allegro ma non tanto 

Break 

Alberto Tombolan (1994)
One Minute Symphony: VETRATA (2022) 

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) 

Symphony no. 5 in e, op. 64 (1888) 

• Andante - Allegro con anima 

• Andante cantabile con alcuna licenza  

• Valse: Allegro moderato 

• Finale: Andante maestoso - Allegro vivace 

End of concert approximately 10:15 p.m. 

Anja Bihlmaier - conductor 

Studies Musikhochschule Freiburg, Mozarteum Salzburg. 

Current position Chief Conductor Residentie Orkest, regular guest conductor Lahti Symphony Orchestra.
Highlights Recently she has conducted the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbrücken Kaiserslautern, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Lahti Symphony Orchestra, Tampere Philharmonic, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Orquestra Symfónica de Barcelona, Basque National Orchestra, Gothenburg Symphony, Finnish Radio Orchestra, Orquesta Sinfónica de Madrid and MDR-Sinfonieorchester. In recent seasons she also conducted several opera productions in Vienna (Volksoper), Trondheim and Malmö. Was permanently associated with the opera houses of Kassel and Hannover. 

Stefan Jackiw - violin 

Education Began studying violin at age four, receiving lessons from Zinaida Gilels, Michèle Auclair and Donald Weilerstein, among others. Also studied at Harvard University and New England Conservatory. Made his professional debut in Boston at age twelve. 

Highlights Performed in Europe with, among others, the Deutsches Sinfonieorchester Berlin, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique de Strassbourg, NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester and in the United States with the New York Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra and the orchestras of Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Pittsburgh. Worked with conductors such as Alan Gilbert, Andrew Davis, Ludovic Morlot, Marin Alsop and Krzysztof Urbanski. Toured Asia with Gidon Kremer and Kremerata Baltica, and with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie and Matthias Pintscher he gave the world premiere of theSecond Violin Concerto "Jubilant Arcs"by David Fulmer dedicated to him. Made his debut at the Residentie Orkest in 2013. 

Won the Avery Fisher Career Grant in 2002. 

Plays a violin by Vincenzo Ruggieri of Cremona (1704). 

Residentie Orkest The Hague 

Founded The Hague, 1904 

Current chief conductor Anja Bihlmaier 

Permanent guest conductors Richard Egarr and Jun Märkl 

Chief conductors Henri Viotta, Peter van Anrooy, Frits Schuurman, Willem van Otterloo, Jean Martinon, Ferdinand Leitner, Hans Vonk, Evgenii Svetlanov, Jaap van Zweden, Neeme Järvi, Nicholas Collon. 

To be seen at Amare, Paard, The National Opera, Royal Concertgebouw, De Doelen, TivoliVredenburg among others . 

Education Annual outreach to over 40,000 schoolchildren, adults and amateur musicians in educational projects. Part of this is The Residents, through which the orchestra brings hundreds of children from districts in The Hague into contact with classical music. 

Tsoupaki, Sibelius & Tchaikovsky 

In her new composition Perasma, Calliope Tsoupaki speaks of inevitably moving forward on one's life path. Not an easy task for Sibelius and Tchaikovsky when you see the circumstances under which the Violin Concerto of the one and the Fifth Symphony of the other were created. 

Transition 

A human being does not like change. Ideally, everything should remain familiar and the same, but that is impossible. You can look backward at what has been, but you are irrevocably moving into the future. That, in a nutshell, is the theme of the new work that Calliope Tsoupaki, Composer of the Fatherland until 2021, was commissioned to compose for the Residentie Orkest . She calls it Perasma , a Greek term that means as much as "transition. For Tsoupaki, the constant moment when you literally have to leave the past behind and continue on your life's path, however difficult that may be at times. But it also gives you the challenge to look forward and discover new things that can be at least as beautiful. Tsoupaki also places that idea in current events. We are in a chilly moment in history, living in fear of an impending war and a major climate crisis, problems that make us feel powerless. And yet we move forward, even though the outcome is unknown. 

In her own way, Tsoupaki gives the concept of "perasma" her warm musical interpretation. How exactly is something personal to her. For the listener, Perasma is thus an experience that leaves full room for her own interpretation. 

Old love 

Despite his fame as Finland's national composer, life was not all roses for Jean Sibelius. He regularly stayed away from home for long periods of time and indulged in extremely expensive eating and drinking, much to the despair of his wife Aino. Composing with a hangover is not easy but Sibelius had to in order to pay his enormous restaurant bills. In 1903, he picked up an old love: the violin. Once he had wanted to become a famous violinist but he was too lacking in talent for that anyway. His thorough knowledge of the instrument, however, did allow him to write his fiendishly difficult Violin Concerto. The first movement is rhapsodic in structure in which orchestra and soloist present the thematic material. It culminates in an extended cadenza in which all the melodies are further developed, after which the interplay between violin and orchestra returns as a reprise. After a lyrical but by no means simple slow middle section, in which the orchestra also rises to great symphonic heights, comes the finale. Here, too, Sibelius sprinkles lavishly with finger-breaking passages and the driving rhythm and recurring melody make it seem almost like a wild folk dance. 

Violinist Victor Nováček, a great violin virtuoso of those days, gave the premiere in February 1904, but it proved too high even for him and the performance became a fiasco. A revised, slightly easier version was successfully premiered a year and a half later by Karel Halíř. But how unplayable the Violin Concerto really was? Sibelius dedicated it a short time later to Hungarian prodigy Franz von Vecsey, who performed it playfully at thirteen years old.... 

From funeral march to triumphal march 

Even more than Sibelius, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky had more thorns than roses in his personal life. Being a homosexual, misunderstood in the very homophobic Russia, therefore married in panic and immediately divorced again, it certainly did his not too strong nerves no good. It can be clearly heard in many compositions from those years. For example, the opening of Symphony No. 4 is sometimes seen as a motif of fate. And in his Manfred Symphony , he felt connected to the hero from Lord Byron's play of the same name who falls victim to the world's incomprehension. But Tchaikovsky does not allow himself to be easily subdued, although his Symphony No. 5 still begins with a theme that bears witness to unfathomable sadness. As the symphony progresses, however, this theme takes on an increasingly positive content. From a profoundly sad funeral march at the beginning, it transforms to a resigned melody in the slow movement, and passes a brief moment of relaxation in the waltz rhythm of the third movement. The finale is even upbeat with the theme as a splashing victory march in a heaven-defying apotheosis. Even Tchaikovsky thought that finale was over the top, calling it "a useless piece of gibberish. The popularity of this symphony belies this harsh condemnation of the composer, but in one respect he may have been right, that it did not do justice to his true depressive feelings that he still had. This was only expressed in the black adagio of his Sixth "Pathetique" symphony. 

Kees Wisse