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Just right before this week’s concert – which is also the opening concert of the Turku Guitar Festival – our intern Laura had a chat with guitarist Patrik Kleemola about what links Japanese and Mexican music and how the collaboration of the festival and orchestra is growing.
Absolutely, yes! These two pieces – Ponce´s Guitar Concerto and Takemitsu´s Spectral Canticle – are not the pieces that you usually get to play with an orchestra as a guitarist. So, I am very happy to present these pieces. Takemitsu was a very important contemporary composer who wrote a lot of pieces for guitar and Ponce wrote this Concerto for Andrés Segovia, who was like the biggest guitarist in the last century.
Well it´s a completely different world. They need different approaches and I would say that it´s a bit challenging, but of course it´s still really interesting.
First of all, contrast is not bad. And the one thing that is a bit common is that Ponce was working in the early 20th century, so he was very much influenced by French impressionistic composers like Debussy. And the same was with Takemitsu. So, you can really hear the French influence in his music in the delicacy of the orchestration. That, I think, is the link.
The first festival took place in 2014 and we had a collaboration concert with the Turku Philharmonic chamber series and from there the collaboration has developed. And as an artistic director, I am more than happy that we can start the festival with a big bang here at the Concert Hall with the full orchestra.
Patrik, thank you very much for your time. We wish you a wonderful concert as well as a great festival!
Other interviews in the series with our intern Laura:
Christian Vásquez
Darren Acosta
Elim Chan
Christina Åstrand