Autumn Aubade

Hakan Hardenberger and Roland Pöntinen have enjoyed a fruitful artistic relationship for more than forty years. They have performed, toured and recorded together and invested considerable time and energy in repertoire ideas. "For us, creating a new programme is an exciting, stimulating and enjoyable process," says Pöntinen. "A process that often reflects our shared interest in jazz, film and other art forms. The idea of placing works with contrasting or age-old characters side by side can often shed new light on the music itself." Here we hear newly composed works, arrangements, favourite pieces by both musicians and standards from the "Great American Songbook". Central to the programme is "Three Autumns" by Staffan Storm, an atmospheric meditation on elegiac autumn moods coupled with the poetry of Anna Akhmatova. Among the contemporary composers are Mark-Anthony Turnage and HK Gruber, who have provided Hardenberger with more works than any other composer. Roland Pöntinen contributes two pieces, including a meditative work inspired by the simplicity and mood of the masterful film music of Thomas Newman. Legend by George Enescu reflects the impressionistic style of the composer's teachers. The concert is also interspersed with shorter pieces, arrangements and reinterpretations of classic American songs and features the singing of legendary jazzman Ornette Coleman, a popular encore in Hardenberger / Pöntinen programmes - always improvised, always different.