Time and Tides: Pekka Kuusisto on premiering Anna Clyne's new violin concerto with the SCO

Pekka Kuusisto suggests a quick walking tour of Helsinki when we meet. We end up at the bar of the Kämp Hotel – one of the favourite watering holes of Finland’s figurehead composer Jean Sibelius, and notorious venue for more than one of his lost weekends. Kuusisto is celebrating, though, and with good reason: he’s just given the first performance of a brand new violin concerto, Time and Tides, with the Helsinki Philharmonic, written for him by his friend and colleague Anna Clyne – a piece that comes to Scotland in performances from co-commissioners the Scottish Chamber Orchestra in March.

In fact, Kuusisto and Clyne are working together closely this season – along with conductor Jukka-Pekka Saraste – as a triumvirate of artistic leaders at the Helsinki Philharmonic, each contributing their own complementary perspective to a particularly rich and varied programme. But they have strong connections with the SCO, too: Kuusisto is one of the orchestra’s best friends, collaborating (and drawing appreciative crowds) several times a season; and Clyne was the SCO’s own associate composer from 2019 to 2022.

It was the SCO, in fact, that first brought Kuusisto and Clyne together. “I was conducting them about three years ago,” Kuusisto remembers, “and they asked me if I’d conduct her Sound and Fury. She came to rehearsals and she’s the nicest person you’d meet. I don’t think I knew what I was doing as a conductor, but the orchestra was great. And when conversations started about our roles with the Helsinki Philharmonic, the idea of a violin concerto quickly came up. We’d spoken about traditional music quite a lot when we first met in Scotland: she loves trad music, and I couldn’t live without it.”

Indeed, Clyne’s concerto is rooted squarely in trad, using folk tunes from England, Scotland, Finland and America (all locations with strong associations for both Clyne and Kuusisto) as the basis for delicate, poignant musical explorations of the sea, travel and heartbreaking separation from loved ones. Another Scottish figure proved crucial in suggesting some of the concerto’s source materials: fiddler Aidan O’Rourke. “Aidan is a good friend in Edinburgh,” Clyne later tells me, “and he introduced me to some Scottish tunes, as fiddler and banjo player Bruce Molsky, who lives near me in Upstate New York, did with some American tunes.” Helsinki listeners lapped up an informal post-concert duo session from Kuusisto and O’Rourke. The two men offer something similar in Scotland, too, now embedded in the SCO’s concert itself.

Kuusisto is deeply immersed in both classical and traditional musics himself, and was closely involved in Time and Tides’s creation too. “I made a few suggestions about the piece,” he admits, “but only small details.” The day after the premiere, it’s still perhaps a bit close to take an objective perspective on the concerto. But Kuusisto had one immediate reaction. “One of the orchestra’s violinists, a really good friend, told me: that piece feels like a warm hug. I think that’s a good sign.”

Time and Tides is a deeply unusual piece, with feet firmly (and convincingly) in both classical and trad styles, but it has a depth and sincerity that feel immediately involving, and ultimately very moving. That’s something emphasised by the unusual requests it makes of its soloist – tapping into Kuusisto’s happiness at embracing the unpredictable, certainly, but also perhaps introducing a note of vulnerability. I ask Clyne later: is it as much a concerto for Pekka as it is a concerto for violin? “The piece would be absolutely fine with someone playing exactly what’s written on the score,” she smiles, “but I definitely wrote it with space for Pekka to add his own personality.”

These personal connections are clearly crucial to both musicians, as are their (and the music’s) links with Scotland. It’s a place Kuusisto enjoys being: he’s previously joked about taking a job on Islay serenading maturing whisky casks. And the SCO plays a big role in that sense of feeling at home: Kuusisto has been a regular visitor to the orchestra for getting on for two decades (“It’s a really great ensemble that manages to be a lot of fun as well,” he says), and his several concerts per season – a pattern he’s maintained for several years now – allow for breadth and freedom in both what he performs, and the roles he plays.

It’s a very different concerto that he brings to another of his 2024 concerts, however: the First Violin Concerto by compatriot Magnus Lindberg. “It’s one of the best new concertos in the past 30 years,” he beams. “I knew Magnus a bit, but he’s from a different generation to me. But we’ve become friends, partly because of this piece – I’ve played it a couple of times with him conducting.”

It’s a fiendishly challenging, deeply extrovert piece, with a breathlessly demanding solo part and radiant, glowing colours in the orchestral writing. “He used to stage demonstrations against using major triads, but now nobody writes them better,” Kuusisto laughs. It’s an undeniably complex piece, “but as long as everyone really understands what’s going on, it works like a piece of elegant machinery”.

His third 2024 concert focuses on a violin classic – but Kuusisto being Kuusisto, he naturally brings his own distinctive perspective to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. In this case, it’s in the form of a collaboration with Ale Carr, Swedish virtuoso on the mandolin-like cittern, who joins the orchestra in the concertos, and delivers a selection of folk tunes with Kuusisto in between. “He memorised the whole thing!” Kuusisto laughs. “And he phoned me when he was learning it to ask: do you want me to play exactly what’s on the score, or can I be me? I told him: you be you.”

Vivaldi intercut with Nordic trad, a brand new violin concerto rooted in folk music: not surprisingly, Kuusisto is melding styles and pushing boundaries. He throws in a curveball, too, just as we’re leaving the Kämp bar: he’s recently been talking to organisations in San Francisco about blending music with AI, robotics, augmented reality. “It’s a really fun challenge, and they’re things I think we should really get on board with as musicians. Things that are going to be normal life in ten or 20 years’ time, we should start thinking about them now.” He’s a musician of apparently ceaseless curiosity and enthusiasm, and one on a mission to make musical connections – all front and centre stage at his three spring concerts with the SCO.

Pekka Kuusisto and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra give the Scottish premiere of Anna Clyne’s Time and Tides at Holy Trinity Church, St Andrews, 13 March, The Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, 14 March and City Halls, Glasgow, 15 March. Kuusisto also performs Lindberg’s Violin Concerto No. 1 from 21-23 February, and Vivaldi’s Four Seasons from 7-9 March, see www.sco.org.uk