Satu Vänskä's Mozart

Satu Vänskä
Director/Violin

Satu Vänskä is Principal Violin of the Australian Chamber Orchestra (ACO). She regularly performs as lead violin and soloist with the ACO. Satu was born to a Finnish family in Japan, where she began violin lessons at the age of three. Her family relocated to Finland when she was 10 and she continued her violin studies with Pertti Sutinen at the Lahti Conservatorium and the Sibelius Academy in Finland, and later at the Hochschule für Musik in Munich as a pupil of Ana Chumachenco where she finished her diploma.

She was named ‘Young Soloist of the Year’ by Sinfonia Lahti in 1998, and a few years later was prize winner of the ‘Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben’. From 2001, Satu played under the auspices of Lord Yehudi Menuhin’s Live Music Now Foundation, which gave her the opportunity to perform with musicians including Radu Lupu and Heinrich Schiff.

In addition to performing as Principal Violin with the ACO, Satu performed as orchestra leader and soloist in the 2018 London production of Barry Humphries’ Weimar Cabaret with the Aurora Orchestra at the Barbican Centre. She has appeared as a soloist with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra and Arctic Chamber Orchestra, and in recital at the Sydney Opera House and the Melbourne Recital Centre, opening their Great Performers Series in 2019. Prior to working with the ACO, Satu performed with the Munich Philharmonic and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.

She is the director, frontwoman, violinist and vocalist of electro-acoustic ensemble ACO Underground, also known as Satu In The Beyond, and, as a violinist and singer, has collaborated with artists that include Barry Humphries, Meow Meow, Jonny Greenwood, The Presets, Jim Moginie and Brian Ritchie in settings ranging from New York’s Le Poisson Rouge and Sydney’s Oxford Art Factory to Slovenia’s Maribor Festival and the US Tanglewood Festival. Satu also performed as vocalist in the soundtracks and live performances of Mountain and River, the ACO’s acclaimed cinematic collaborations with director Jennifer Peedom.

She plays the 1728/29 Stradivarius violin on loan from the ACO Instrument Fund.

Olivia Davies
(b. 1988)

Crystalline

Composer’s notes:
Crystalline was commissioned by the Hush Foundation in 2018 for the album Collective Wisdom and was performed and recorded by the Australian Chamber Orchestra Collective.

The title Crystalline stems from initial sketches of the piece, where fragments of sound slowly connect – inspired by the process of crystal formation. While this process was initially a general concept, it became the foundation for how the rest of the music would unfold and develop.

The music begins with individual sounds emerging in isolation throughout the ensemble, suspended at first in silence then gradually connecting and building into rapid, repeating patterns – evoking an image of light refracting through crystal forms. The opening is sparse and, listening carefully, you hear the slight difference between each sound, the unique gesture from each musician. It is a piece that reflects my interest in musical space, instrumental colour, and the organic transformation of both.

Composed: 2018.
First WASO performance: This is the first performance of Olivia Davies’ Crystalline.
Instrumentation: strings only.

Lili Boulanger
(1893-1918)

D’un matin de printemps (Of a Spring Morning)
Arranged for small orchestra by Bernard Rofe

In Paris, on 9 June 1921, Nadia Boulanger presented a concert in memory of her younger sister, Lili Boulanger, who’d died three years before at the age of 24. The program included the radiant and mercurial D’un matin de printemps, one of the last works Lili completed in her own hand. (Her Pie Jesu, possibly part of a projected Requiem, was dictated from her deathbed).

In the accompanying lecture, poet Camille Mauclair painted a paradoxical portrait – referring to Lili as ‘a child’, fragile, charming and suffering from a lifetime of chronic illness, but also a genius, whose music surpassed the challenges of her short life. Critics (and listeners), assuming that the music of a sickly young woman should echo her ‘frail grace’, have long been surprised by its expressive intensity, rich colours and often ambitious scope.

Lili Boulanger herself was a confident, lively and ambitious personality. Born into a professional musical family, at 19 she became the first woman to win the coveted Prix de Rome – a remarkable achievement given the misogynistic atmosphere of the Paris Conservatoire. This led to an exclusive contract from the publisher Ricordi and the foundation of a flourishing career.

D’un matin de printemps shares its opening motif with a ‘mirror’ work, D’un Soir triste (Of a Sad Evening), and both were conceived simultaneously in solo, piano trio and large orchestral versions – speaking to Boulanger’s business instinct as well as the flexibility and strength of her musical ideas.

Boulanger’s music has been compared to that of Claude Debussy, especially in her approach to harmony, prioritising sensation over function. But listen to the strings’ ‘crunchy’ repeated chords in the lively opening to D’un matin de printemps and it’s easy to imagine that, if she’d lived, she would have been at home with composers such as Darius Milhaud and Francis Poulenc, and ‘Les Six’ might well have been ‘Les Sept’.

In its solo version, D’un matin de printemps was pragmatically published ‘for violin (or flute) and piano’. But Boulanger’s orchestration reveals she had the flute’s sonority in mind for the light and agile principal theme – only in the mysterious but ‘ardent’ central section does the sound of a solo violin take over. Choices such as these are reflected in Bernard Rofe’s new arrangement as he seeks to illuminate Boulanger’s melodic lines and astringent harmonies, while ‘retaining more than a splash of her orchestral colour’.

Yvonne Frindle © 2025

Composed: 1917-18
First performance: 13 March 1921, Paris; Rhené-Baton conducting the Orchestre des Concerts Pasdeloup (version for large orchestra).
First WASO performance: This is the first performance of Bernard Rofe’s arrangement.
Instrumentation: two flutes, two oboes, bassoon, two horns and strings.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
(1756-1791)

Symphony No.21 in A, K.134
Allegro
Andante
Menuetto
Allegro

The 16-year-old Mozart was in the employ of the Archbishop of Salzburg when he composed this symphony. Despite his youth, he was already the foremost composer of orchestral music in the archdiocese. The Symphony is the last in a group of six composed in 1772: Symphonies K.129, 130 and 132 are dated May in the autograph manuscript, Symphonies K.132 and 133 bear the date of July, while this Symphony was completed in August. These dates indicate a concentrated engagement with the symphonic genre on Mozart’s part, and it is hardly surprising that among these works are the composer’s first really great symphonies.

Symphony No.21 is clearly in this category. It is scored for a small orchestra consisting only of strings, two flutes and two horns, with possible/optional doubling of the cello line by the bassoon. Among the memorable comments made about the Symphony are those of Georges de Saint-Foix, who found the work ‘astonishingly imaginative and poetic’, and Stanley Sadie, who described it ‘as among Mozart’s most closely argued’.

The opening movement, marked ‘Allegro’, is in the 3/4 metre (characteristic of a minuet) and, despite its brilliance and colourful instrumentation, it has something of the quality of a very fast courtly dance. The musical ideas are remarkable for their elegance and refinement. This movement (like the second and fourth) is in sonata form. However, Mozart unusually ends the opening section with a repetition of the first theme, and concludes the movement with an 18-bar coda.

The second movement is marked ‘Andante’ and is explicitly operatic in style. The lyrical, beautifully crafted melody is supported by a rippling accompaniment of demi-semiquavers, and the division of the violas into two parts (a favoured device for Mozart) adds to the richness of the texture. The antiphonal writing for the different instrumental groups adds to the overall subtlety of the piece.

The Minuet is lively, extroverted and rather unusual with its trilled opening note, recurring trills and flowing triplet figures. The second section of this dance – the trio – is strikingly original. Its opening phrases are serene and gentle. This atmosphere is abruptly swept aside by the dramatic central section, with its wonderful combination of minor tonality, mandolin-like pizzicato strings, and prominent horn part.

The Finale returns to the brilliant, festive character of the first movement, whose opening melody Neal Zaslaw has described as a bourrée. The lilting syncopations of this courtly dance colour the entire movement.

Robert Forgács © 2012

Year/Date of Composition: 1772 (August).
First WASO performance: This is WASO’s first performance of the Symphony.
Instrumentation: two flutes, bassoon, two horns and strings.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
(1756-1791)

Violin Concerto No.3 in G, K216
Allegro
Adagio
Rondeau (Allegro – Andante – Allegretto – Allegro)

Mozart’s father once suggested to him that the best way to introduce himself in a place where he wasn’t known was to play a violin concerto. We think of Mozart as a pianist, and all many people know about his violin playing comes from letters written to him by his father, Leopold, one of the leading violin teachers of the time, exhorting him not to give up practising, and claiming that he could, if he worked at it, play like the finest violinist in Europe. Mozart composed all but the first of his five violin concertos, including this one, in a sustained burst in 1775 when he was 19. They have sometimes been regarded as attempts to please his father, rather than himself. Yet none of his piano concertos up to this time show the maturity of conception of the last three of these violin concertos, the ones in G major (K216), D (K218) and A (K219).

Of the numberless violin concertos composed in the 18th century, the standard modern ‘symphony concert’ repertoire retains only a few of Vivaldi’s, those of J.S. Bach, and Mozart’s. Mozart’s violin concertos are standard because they are very good music. Listening illustrates this better than words, but part of it is that the musical ideas are so strong, and there are so many of them. Yet Mozart, even at this age, can organise his many ideas concisely and convincingly. Composing operas, his main preoccupation, has already taught him how to make the soloist the protagonist in a drama.

The solo violin parts of these concertos put musical substance, and idiomatic writing for the instrument, ahead of virtuoso display. This wasn’t because Mozart’s own violin technique was limited. The concertos were possibly intended not for him but for his Salzburg colleague Antonio Brunetti (first violin and soloist in the Court Orchestra). Both men certainly played at least some of them, and Brunetti himself said, ‘Mozart could play anything.’

The Concerto in G major is in many ways the most endearing of Mozart’s violin concertos, the most intimate, charming and sensual in expression. Here Mozart displays the assurance to transcend the more conventional, sometimes short-winded style of the first two concertos.

To begin this concerto, Mozart reuses music from the aria ‘Aer tranquillo’ of his opera Il re pastore, composed five months earlier. There’s a flood of contrasting ideas, and the solo violin becomes a willing contributor to the thematic richness. This violin concerto anticipates the mature piano concertos in the variety of exchanges between solo and orchestra, and within the orchestra, setting off strings against oboes and horns in the development. Here the first oboe takes over as the brilliant high voice. Eventually the violin takes over the oboe phrase and leads the music towards the reprise, its solo role, as if a singer, underlined by a brief passage of recitative.

Whereas the first movement is energetically playful, the second is rapturous. This is the type of Mozart slow movement aptly described as ‘dreamy’, like that of the Piano Concerto in C, K467 (used in the film Elvira Madigan). The similarities include the broken triplet accompaniment, muted strings and pizzicato bass.

The Rondeau, in a jaunty 3/8 time, has a main theme which comes back five times, and is especially marked by its throwaway ending, where the horns and oboes are left on their own. Indeed, the punctuation from these instruments is a feature of the movement. Eventually the dominance of the 3/8 rhythm is broken by two fanciful episodes. The first, in a slower tempo (Andante), has a pizzicato string accompaniment overlapping a kind of stately pavane from the violin. This gives way immediately to a much simpler, folk-like theme in common time. This is the theme some scholars believe made Mozart and his father refer to this concerto as ‘the Strassburger’, the name of a (Hungarian) folk-melody; others believe they were referring to a similar passage in the D major Concerto, K218.

After this rather whimsical interruption, which we must suppose contained in-jokes more obvious to the first audiences than to us, but is delightful anyway, the Rondeau resumes its earlier course, but fantasy has the last word: the throwaway line gracefully waves as the concerto leaves the stage.

© David Garrett

First performance: Exact circumstances unknown, but the first performance was probably given by either Antonio Brunetti or Mozart himself, in Salzburg.
First WASO performance: 13 June 1942. E.J. Roberts, conductor; Vaughan Manly, violin.
Most recent WASO performance: 25-26 August 2017. Asher Fisch, conductor; Karen Gomyo, violin.
Instrumentation: two flutes, two oboes, two horns, strings, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion and strings.

Luigi Boccherini
(1743-1805)

Symphony in D minor, G.506 Op.12 No.4 La casa del diavolo (The House of the Devil)
Andante sostenuto – Allegro assai
Andantino con moto
Andante sostenuto – Allegro con moto

Stanley Sadie, in his editor’s article on Boccherini in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, makes a big claim for this composer: ‘the chief representative of Latin instrumental music during the Viennese Classical period’. Yet, in spite of a recent flurry of performances and recordings, familiarity with Boccherini has not spread to the musical public at large.

In some ways we hear less of him than we used to: ‘the’ Boccherini Minuet seems to turn up less frequently these days, as does ‘the’ Boccherini Cello Concerto, once a staple of almost every cellist’s repertoire. The Minuet, usually heard played by a string quartet, is actually from one of the more than 100 string quintets with a second cello.

Boccherini was the most prolific of all major composers of chamber music, and the quintets are his most substantial single body of works (though not by much: there are 90-odd string quartets by him as well).

In some ways the most interesting thing about Boccherini, from a biographical point of view, is that, like Domenico Scarlatti and Farinelli before him, he was an Italian musician who spent much of his career in Spain. The results in his music are obvious in the fandangos and other Iberian dances he introduced from time to time; in his use of the guitar in chamber music; and in travelogues using the night watch music of Madrid. This last became virtually a Boccherini theme tune – so much so that the 20th-century Italian, Luciano Berio, has composed an orchestral piece with five of Boccherini’s versions of this ‘ritirata’ (a call to the soldiers to ‘retreat’ to their quarters) being heard simultaneously.

Too much emphasis on Spain would conceal what Stanley Sadie emphasises: that Boccherini composed in the lingua franca of the Viennese Classical period, including some of the emotional tumult associated with the ‘Storm and Stress’ movement. This was best captured by the contemporary who called him ‘the wife of Haydn’, referring no doubt to the sensuous, pliably Latinate quality of his melody and harmony. (Sadie refers to its pervading charm, gentleness or even effeminacy.) By contrast with Haydn or Mozart, Boccherini tended to be increasingly preoccupied with delicate effects of harmony, texture and rhythmic figuration, at the expense of structural direction and strength. The results are often delightful on their own terms.

The Symphony heard in this concert, one of 18 by Boccherini, is his best known, thanks to its title and the music to which this refers. ‘The House of the Devil’ is of course Hell, where Don Juan was dragged in punishment for his sins. Boccherini’s subtitle to the last movement of the Symphony explains the connection: ‘Chaconne representing Hell and composed in imitation of Mr. Gluck’s in his Le Festin de pierre’.

This ‘Stone Banquet’ was Gluck’s ballet (1761) on the Don Juan legend, and Boccherini did more than just imitate it. He lifted some of Gluck’s music wholesale. (Gluck himself was to do so as well, borrowing his own Don Juan music for the furies in the 1774 Paris revision of his opera Orpheus and Euridice).

Boccherini meant to pay tribute to Gluck, who encouraged his first steps as a composer. But Boccherini’s last movement is not a Chaconne – instead of repeating the basic material (as Gluck does), it is structured more like sonata form. This is only one of the remarkable features of this Symphony. The same slow introduction is used for the first movement and the third, in an anticipation of cyclical form. Much of the music is vehement, but different in character from the minor key symphonies of Mozart and Haydn.

© David Garrett

Year/Date of Composition: 1771.
First WASO performance: This is WASO’s first performance of the Symphony.
Instrumentation: two oboes, bassoon; two horns, harpsichord and strings.