Mika Kares, Szilvia Vörös, Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra & Susanna Mälkki
Biographie Mika Kares, Szilvia Vörös, Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra & Susanna Mälkki
Susanna Mälkki
A conductor born and bred in Helsinki, Susanna Mälkki grew up to the accompaniment of the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra. In 2004 she received her first invitation to conduct the orchestra of which she would become Chief Conductor in autumn 2016. Her path to the conductor’s podium passed through the cello classes of the Sibelius Academy and the Edsberg Institute in Stockholm, however, and the position of principal cellist in the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra. She made her conducting breakthrough in 1999, at the Helsinki Festival, and her first regular conducting appointment was as Artistic Director of the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra. Her Music Directorship of the celebrated Ensemble Intercontemporain (2006–2013) established her as a profound interpreter of music of the present day.
Susanna Mälkki has conducted the world’s finest orchestras. In season 2017-18 she made her debut at the Vienna State Opera season and took over as Principal Guest Conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Musical America voted her Conductor of the Year 2017.
Szilvia Vörös
Hungarian mezzo-soprano Szilvia Vörös (b. 1988) had no sooner graduated from the Ferenc Liszt Academy in Budapest than she began receiving prestigious invitations. She joined the ensemble of the Vienna State Opera in autumn 2018, having made her debut at the Hungarian National Opera in 2014 and soon after in Milan, Toulouse, Paris and at the Salzburg Festival. She dreamt from an early age of one day singing Judith in Bartók’s Bluebeard but decided to wait until she was at least 30. Without sufficient experience of life and love it would, she said, be difficult to enter into Judith’s world. For Judith is bold; she is prepared to abandon her former life to discover Bluebeard’s secret. She gets him to open his heart to her, but she does not have the wisdom to stop when things are all going well. Her curiosity is tainted by jealousy, suspicion and aggression, and she must accordingly suffer the fate of all his other wives.
Szilvia Vörös clocks up three ‘firsts’ in this concert version of Bluebeard’s Castle: her debut in Finland, in this opera, and on an opera CD (to be released by BIS).
Mika Kares
(b. 1978) is one of the most highly-acclaimed Finnish basses in the world today. Since making his breakthrough in 2012, he has sung at such illustrious venues as the Zurich Opera, the Bavarian State Opera, the Theater an der Wien and the Vienna State Opera, to be followed next summer by the Berlin State Opera. In future seasons he intends to concentrate on Wagnerian roles. Like Szilvia Vörös, he thought long and hard before agreeing to sing the part of Bluebeard, for he regards it as possibly the most challenging of his career.
Kares speaks fluent German and reasonable Italian, but Hungarian plunges him right in at the deep end. Not only does the music make tremendous demands: he has also had his work cut out to master the Hungarian grammar, pronunciation and stress. Yet this is still not enough; he also has to get right inside his character’s mind set.
