Kaija SAARIAHO (b. 1952)
Vers toi qui es si loin (2000/2018) [6:49]
Circle Map (2012) [30:14]
Neiges, version for 12 cellos (1998) [18:30]
Graal Théâtre for violin and orchestra (1994) [30:15]
Peter Herresthal (violin)
Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra/Clément Mao-Takacs
rec. 2018, Oslo Concert Hall, Norway
English texts included
BIS BIS2402 SACD [87:12]
Kaija Saariaho is one of that gifted generation of Finnish musicians which includes the slightly younger Magnus Lindberg and Esa-Pekka Salonen, and the slightly older Kalevi Aho. She started as a fairly hard-edged modernist, but this changed on her move to France in the early 1980s. She has lived there ever since, and has developed a lush neo-impressionist idiom, hauntingly beautiful though sometimes a little lacking in variety. Her best-known work is probably the opera L’amour de loin, which has had several productions, including at the Metropolitan Opera in 2016, when it was transmitted live to screens all around the world. She has been fairly well represented in recordings, which include L’amour de loin, and which have mostly been issued by the Finnish company Ondine. This issue, however, is from BIS, a Swedish label. It contains four works, presented in reverse chronological order.
Vers toi qui es si loin in fact derives from that opera; it is a transcription for violin and orchestra of its final aria. The violin sings a high and beautiful rhapsodic line over a sparse accompaniment. If that sounds like Szymanowski, that would be a very fair comparison: he transcribed Roxana’s aria from his opera King Roger for violin. What a shame it is so short.
Circle Map is an orchestral work which, however, incorporates a spoken voice reading poems by the Persian poet Rumi in the original Persian. Since most listeners will not know that language, the effect is a bit muted, though translations are given in the booklet. There is also some trickery with electronics. There are six short movements, some slower, some faster and more rhythmical. They are all wonderfully atmospheric, rather in the manner of Debussy’s Sirènes, though I think that melodrama – a spoken voice over music – rarely works except in short stretches.
Neiges has two versions: the original, for eight cellos, and the version we have here, for twelve. It was written with the help of computer analysis, a feature of the spectralist school of composers which has influenced Saariaho. That need not put the listener off because it is a most imaginative work, with five contrasted movements. The first features slowly changing chords – think of the third of Schoenberg’s Five Pieces for Orchestra, or Ligeti’s Atmosphères – while the second has anguished cries, the third throbbing chords, the fourth a vigorous pizzicato, and the fifth an enigmatic rocking rhythm. This is not at all what you might expect from an ensemble of cellos. I liked this one a lot.
The final work on the disc is the earliest. I remember attending what was probably the first London performance of Graal Théâtre some twenty-five years ago. I went specifically to hear this work, because something in the advance publicity had intrigued me. I had not previously heard of Saariaho. I have to admit I could not make anything of it. My difficulties start with the title. The Graal is another spelling for the Holy Grail of Arthurian romances, and Théâtre is theatre, but the only thing I can think of to link the two together is Wagner’s Parsifal, which does not seem to have much to do with Saariaho’s piece. I find, on returning to the work after all these years and having heard a good deal of Saariaho in the intervening years, that it continues to baffle me. It is in two movements. The first begins and ends with a violin cadenza, with a wave of sound in the middle and some very astringent writing. The second movement I cannot even describe; it seems to me to belong to that world of hard-edged modernism which Saariaho was already beginning to leave behind. However, I am obviously missing something, as it is has been very successful, and this is something like its sixth recording.
The performances were recorded in the presence of the composer, and presumably she was satisfied with them. They certainly seem competent and assured. The soloist in Vers toi is Peter Herresthal, who is its dedicatee. He plays a Guadagnini violin with a Eugène Sartory bow. The twelve cellists in Neiges are all named. The conductor, Clément Mao-Takacs, is a specialist in Saariaho’s music, so we can take his work as authoritative. The recording is in a good concert-hall acoustic with a nice bloom on the sound. I was listening in ordinary two channel stereo, but this is actually a SACD. The booklet is helpful, but the presentation is not up to the standard of the Ondine releases of Saariaho’s music. Instead of a jewel-case we get the new BIS ecopak, which is like the gatefold sleeve from the days of vinyl. That is to save on plastic,
undoubtedly a good thing, though it does seem rather flimsy to me. But the cover picture is most off-putting. Instead of the atmospheric pictures which Ondine use, we have a dreary photo of the composer with the violinist and the conductor, the last looking distinctly scruffy. Was this really the best BIS could think of?
Anyway, we have here the first recordings of Vers toi and this version of Neiges, so Saariaho followers will want this. Others may enjoy it too but be wary of Graal Théâtre.
Stephen Barber
