Eero Järvilehto

Eero Järvilehto was born on 19 May 1972 in Helsinki (Finland), but his family moved to Tampere shortly after his birth. There he began to play the flute at an early age and studied first under Johanna Salminen at the Tampere Conservatory, later at the age of 10 under Bill Dyer. At the age of 15 Eero Järvilehto also attended private composition studies under Esko Syvinki and Lasse Heikkilä. Despite his musically interested early days Eero Järvilehto decided to study a caring profession. He moved back to Helsinki to study social care, but still worked on his musical education and received composition lessons privately by Juhani Nuorvala. Therefore Eero Järvilehto is considered as a self-taught composer nowadays.

After his studies Eero Järvilehto continued both performing flute and composing parallel to his work as a social care worker. Because of his interest in the music of Dmitri Shostakovich he became a close friend of composer Pehr Henrik Nordgren in the 1990s, who shared the same admiration for the great Russian composer. In 2001 the „Finnish Shostakovich Society“ was founded with Pehr Henrik Nordgren as the chairman, and Eero Järvilehto was asked to be the first secretary.

Beside these activities Eero Järvilehto worked as a flutist in different occasions. He performed chamber music by Louis Andriessen, Hindemith or Poulenc, was part of the orchestral performance of Lasse Heikkilä's „Simon of Cyrene“ or performed his own flute compositions. In recent years he also conducted ensemble performances of his own works like the Alto flute concerto No.1 or his Holocaust-Lamentations.

In addition to his performing Eero Järvilehto always composed music. An emphasis lies naturally on flute music and so his work catalogue contains 5 autobiographical suites for flute solo, 5 sonatas for flute solo, 2 sonatas for flute and piano, 2 sonatas for flute and cello, a concerto for flute and string orchestra, and 2 alto flute concertos and a great amount of small pieces for flute. But there are also a symphony, 3 concertos for violin, a "Film Music Suite, for soprano and orchestra", compositions for smaller ensembles like the famous "Holocaust-Lamentations, for narrator, chamber ensemble and 8 women's voices" and chamber music like the most successful "The wind in the willows, for musical saw and imitations of bird voices" (over 40 performances, among them a concert for Tellervo Koivisto, the former First Lady of Finland), string quartets, a piano sonata, and much more.

Eero Järvilehto's complete work catalogue can be found on his website here.

Of special interest for my research work are of course the three violin concertos by Eero Järvilehto. I am honoured to have the permission to publish the three concertos and will present them in total in the future. Meanwhile I can present here detailed descriptions and the score of the first violin concerto for download:

Violin concerto No.1

The Violin Concerto No. 1 op. 13 was composed in 1988 and is scored for violin soloist and 13 violins. The concerto is dedicated to Nikolai Fadeev and his student string orchestra and so the composition is short and for student level (for soloist and orchestral players). The concerto is subtitled "Reminiscences", which refers to the hidden Shostakovich theme, which occured at a rehearsal of a Shostakovich Waltz by the dedicated student orchestra.

The concerto is also included in the orchestra suite op.88 and there is also an arrangement, the Piece for string quartet no. 2 op. 64.



Violin concerto No.2

The Violin concerto no. 2 op. 33 was composed in 1990/91 and is scored for solo violin, ensemble, large percussion section and female choir. The score demands a choir of 50 vocalising women that replaces the string section in the scoring. The violin concerto was premiered on 22 November 1992 at the Tampere Conservatory Hall by violinist Merja Järvilehto, an instrumental ensemble of students of the Tampere Conservatory, with pianist Tarmo Järvilehto, the Sympaatti choir, and conductor Juha Törmä.

Violin concerto No.3

The Violin concerto No. 3 op 125 was composed between 2009 and 2014 and is scored for violin and orchestra. The work has three movements: I. The Bells – II. Psalm 67 – III. Folk songs. In the first movement celesta and vibraphone have central parts hence the title "The Bells". The title of the second mobement derives from the fact that it is an arrangement of the composers own song "Psalm 67". The third movement "Folk songs" uses a Karelian folk song for kantele, Church bells of Konevitsa, and a melody refering to Ostrobothnian folk melodies. The part of the solist contains also small variation of citations from Boris Blacher's Violin concerto, because the work is dedicated to Tobias Bröker, whose admires the Blacher concerto.