Orchestre de Paris – Philharmonie 2

Stefan Dohr, the excellent principal horn player of the Berliner Philharmoniker, has inspired many composers to create new works: Toshio Hosokawa, Wolfgang Rihm, Hans Abrahamsen, and Jörg Widmann, to name a few. Now Esa-Pekka Salonen has written a new orchestral work featuring the solo horn for him, which will have its world premiere this evening. Salonen is one of those truly multi-talented individuals. He is among the world’s most sought-after conductors and has also created a large oeuvre of compositions. It seems obvious that as a Finn, he has a particular fondness for the father figure of Finnish music, Jean Sibelius. But it was a long road to get there for Salonen: during his studies in Helsinki, he “just wanted to get away from Sibelius.” So he went to Italy, and that’s where it happened: “In an antiquarian bookshop near La Scala, I came across Sibelius’s Fifth for 500 lire, and immediately I saw: this music was something completely different, far from the mainstream.” Since then, Salonen has been a huge Sibelius fan. And anyone who hears the magnificent final theme of the Fifth, for which Sibelius was inspired by the flight of swans, will immediately understand his enthusiasm.