Prokofiev Wallin

Väino Raitio (1891–1945) experienced his first success in Helsinki in 1920 with the orchestral work The Swans, which was strongly inspired by Aleksandr Scriabin’s music. After a few years of being a young and promising composer, he fell out of step with the prevailing Finish tastes of the times, which leaned more towards music with a stronger national character. The inspiration for Moonlight on Jupiter (1923) is supposed to have come from a strange dream in which he traveled to space and was able to see seven of Jupiter’s moons.

Rolf Wallin (b. 1957) is one of Norway’s most merited and recognised composers nationally as well as internationally. His trumpet concerto Fisher King was premiered by Håkan Hardenberger in Cologne in 2011. The fisher king is a character from the legend of the Holy Grail. He was the last of a number of men who were entrusted to keep the grail. Rolf Wallin played the trumpet while growing up and, according to him, he had a love/hate relationship with the instrument. He says that this concerto is partly autobiographical and that it visits some dark places.

Symphony No. 7 (1952) was the last major work Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953) completed before he died a year later on the same day as Joseph Stalin, the supreme leader of the Soviet Union. In 1948 Stalin began to tighten his hard line toward artists, making the last years of Prokofiev’s life very difficult. His ex-wife Lina was arrested and sent to Siberia and he lived in fear both financially broke and in poor health.

Symphony No. 7 has an abundance of melodies and melancholic moods and at times may be reminiscent of Prokofiev’s famous ballets Cinderella and Romeo and Juliet. He wrote the symphony to have it performed on the Soviet Children’s Radio Division, and many people have interpreted the symphony as if the composer is looking back at his happy childhood memories.