Juhani NUORVALA
Three Impromptus
for clarinet and kantele. String Quartet No.2. What's a nice chord like you
doing in a piece like this? for three accordians. String Quartet No.1
'Dancescapes' Twitching Gait.
BIS CD 1107 [67
mins]
Crotchet
This is an interesting and thought-provoking compilation of music by a young
Finnish composer, comprising works composed during a five year span 1992
& 1997, recorded 1993-1999. Is it a new departure for BIS to have chosen
the silliest title for its cover illustration - to attract what new group
of purchasers?
WANCLYDIAPLT was a jeu d'esprit for the Helsinki Film Festival, originally
a fanfare for five accordions, here reduced to three, over-dubbed by Mikko
Luoma. Juhani Nuorvala (b. 1961) hoped it would catch the 'child-like
wackiness' of an American Underground film-star.
Nuorvala draws on urban pop as well as French 'spectral' music, American
Minimalism and New Romanticism (he chose to study with the iconoclastic David
Del Tredici) and he celebrates the blurring of the line between 'high' and
'popular' culture, blending disparate ingredients 'to create a mode of expression
entirely his own', says the anonymous writer of the introduction to Nuorvala's
own programme notes. He starts with clear, simple figures which may become
complex - the jazzy Twitching Gait has a four-note melodic motif in
4/4 with a shortened fourth beat. The string quartets interested me less;
they till ground familiar from the Kronos repertoire; the second relying
heavily on short scalar figures.
The best reason to explore this portrait of a composer with a restless, enquiring
mind is the first item, Impromptus for clarinet and kantele,
a zither'like traditional Finnish folk instrument. With Aino
Meisalmi-Minklainen's kantele tuned to 'just intonation', Nuorvala introduces
several innovations, percussive effects and glissandi using the tuning
levers. Delicious.
Peter Grahame Woolf
