Kaija Saariaho (1952-2023)
Saarikoski Songs (2013-2020, orch. 2020/21)
Vista (2019)
Three Preludes (1981)
Anu Komsi (soprano), Marzi Nyman (organ)
BBC Symphony Orchestra/Sakari Oramo
Texts and translations provided.
rec. 2023/24, Helsinki Music Centre (Preludes); other dates & locations not given
Ondine ODE1512-2 [53]
This disc acts as a tribute to a much-missed Finnish master composer whose music is only growing in stature. It presents live recordings of two song-cycles stretching across forty years of Saariaho’s career: the earliest cycle with organ, the other orchestrated from the piano and voice original and one of her last orchestral works.
The Three Preludes are miniatures for soprano and organ setting texts form Isaiah and the psalms. Saariaho played the organ when a student in Finland. I don’t find these especially representative or of the standard one comes to expect of this composer, but they do in their sound world represent something approaching the interest that she had later in creating electronic music.
At just over twenty-six minutes, Vista for orchestra, in two sections and dating from 2019, is the longest work of the three and is for me the highlight of the disc. Sadly, Saariaho never fully heard the work, as its premiere was delayed by Covid and even later affected again by social distancing. Interestingly, the composer adopts a new feeling for orchestration, a throw-back possibly to her younger days. The ideas came to her while she was driving along the USA’s Pacific coast and discovering views and enticing landscapes. The first movement, ‘Horizons’, is often dreamy and shimmering, the second, ‘Targets’, is more violent at first with a strong sense of forward movement until a huge climax, then during the last five minutes it gradually fades and leaves one with a feeling that this could almost be conceived as the composer’s valedictory statement. The recording is beautifully spacious, and Sakari Oramo coaxes his orchestra to display his innate understanding of these landscapes.
The five Saarikoski Songs were originally composed for voice and piano; one of them is a single piece from 2023. As you listen to this orchestral realisation, you realise that this is surely the version that counts. Pentti Saarikoski’s (1937-1983) poems, dating from 1973 are aphoristic, with no words wasted and ideal for a composer such as Saariaho with such a subtle and sensitive approach and sense of colour. Interestingly, the first, ‘The Face of Nature’ is especially apt, as we face this volatile climate, ‘The forest is the academy obliterated by barbarians’. The second song is dramatic and embraces some stratospherically high notes from the soloist. The third song was composed in France and has a certain delicate French sensibility. It is utterly beautiful and detached from modern life pure atmosphere. The fourth, ‘Snake and Bird’, is aggressively based around the note A and is remarkably agitated: ‘The snake closes its mouth in a bite’. The last, ‘Through the mist’, is the longest and is almost nearly on the verge of silence. These latter two songs were composed during lockdown, and you feel the loneliness and apprehension behind the notes. Only a few days after its completion, the composer was diagnosed with a brain tumour to which she quickly succumbed in June 2023.
Anu Komsi is impressive in this cycle; her high register often deftly blends, as the composer must have wanted, into a violin or flute on the same pitch. Then, at times, she can be powerfully stirring and masterful. Texts are supplied, as are insightful liner notes in part by the composer and also by Aleksi Barrière.
Gary Higginson
Previous review: Aidan Gray
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