Blue and White Notes

Jouni Hirvelä: Engrams

Jouni Hirvelä (b. 1982) is a Finnish composer mainly of chamber music, solo works and sound installations. Engrams is, he says, about different aspects of remembering: the workings of the mind, memories of the departed, and memory loss. He wanted to write textures bearing traces of musical events, like reflections. As they are repeated, they transform and vary. The work contains a reference to The Garden of Death, a piece for piano composed by Leevi Madetoja in memory of his brother, who perished in the purges of the Finnish Civil War of 1918. Hirvelä sought to capture the border state between life and death and the sentiments caused by the death of a loved-one by creating textures coloured by a piano and celesta and various chiming percussions. Madetoja himself suffered from mental health problems and memory loss later in life, and wrote in his diary how his lapses of memory affected his hearing of music.

Engrams was composed as a commission from the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra as part of its Helsinki Variations project.

Aarre Merikanto: Autumn Sonnet

Unlike his late-Romantic Savannah-la-Mar, Autumn Sonnet (1922) represents Aarre Merikanto the Modernist, in a distinctive blend of atonal Expressionism and Impressionist mood music. As he wrote to his father Oskar, everything in Autumn Sonnet is grey, hazy and desolate. The mist rises over the distant marsh, the day has long since gone into hiding and all is a reminder of death. The words are by V.A. Koskenniemi (1885–1962), a highly popular Finnish poet who also penned the words of the Finlandia Hymn, and address the existential loneliness of the self. Autumn stands as a symbol for the end of one stage in life. The sentiments of youth are reduced to ashes, and the lord of the night, of autumn sneaks stealthily in. One critic writing of the premiere of Autumn Sonnet said that the vocal part was inhumanly difficult to sing, and another that such music is impossible to understand.

Aarre Merikanto: Savannah-la-Mar

In the 1920s, Aarre Merikanto (1893–1958) totally disassociated himself from the legacy of both his father, Oskar, and Finnish National-Romanticism. Instead, he began to favour Expressionist gestures, dissonance, unusual orchestral timbres and unconventional formats. His contemporaries shook their heads, Aarre grew bitter and destroyed some of his compositions. In the eyes of Finland’s postwar composers, he became a martyr to Finnish Modernism.

His early works were, however, on the whole well received. One was the orchestral song Savannah-la-Mar written for Finnish soprano Aino Ackté and premiered by the HPO in 1915. It is a setting of a poem by Bertel Gripenberg (1878–1947), a man nowadays best remembered for his elitist, anti-democratic and racist views and for his idolisation of violence in the Civil War. The title of the poem refers to a town in Jamaica and may be regarded as a romantic fantasy apparently inspired by a hurricane that hit the town. The music is melodramatic in the Late Romantic style and shows few signs of its composer’s later radical idiom.

Heidi Sundblad-Halme: Pan and Shepherds, Pan Plays

Heidi Sundblad-Halme (1903–1973) was in her day an unusually versatile figure on the Finnish musical scene: composer, conductor, pianist, teacher, journalist, and co-founder of the Helsinki Women’s Orchestra. She both composed and arranged a considerable repertoire for this orchestra, often in several versions. The four movements of her Pan Suite for coloratura soprano, obbligato flute and orchestra she composed in the late 1940s and early 1950s (Pan and Shepherds, The Bumblebees, Pan Plays and The Lark Sings) were performed both separately and in various combinations. For each of the movements she chose texts by different poets; that for Pan and Shepherds is by Toini Lönnqvist and the one for Pan Plays is by Einari Vuorela.

The ancient Greek god Pan occupies a leading role in the richly expressive orchestral works of Sundblad-Halme radiating a sense of archaic nature mysticism. At the heart of the Pan Suite is a playful dialogue between singer and flute, accompanied by the colourful orchestral writing that was Sundblad-Halme’s hallmark.

Leevi Madetoja: Symphony No. 2 in E Minor

Following the success of his first symphony in 1916, Finnish composer Leevi Madetoja (1887–1947) soon began sketching a second. Progress was, however, slow, due partly to his teaching obligations and to the concert reviews he wrote for Finland’s leading daily, Helsingin Sanomat (HS). History has not detailed his personal experience of the Finnish Civil War of 1918, but his brother is known to have been executed by the Reds and his good friend the composer Toivo Kuula was accidentally shot dead. Yet the second symphony premiered in late 1918 is a meditative work rich in pastoral moods and was hailed by the HS critic Evert Katila as “the greatest achievement since the monumental cycle of our maestro Sibelius”. It does nevertheless reflect the trauma of the Civil War in many ways. The pastoral ambience is most evident in the first two movements, though they, too, are not without the threat of violence. The third movement is unusually violent for Madetoja and builds up to a mighty catastrophe. Said Madetoja of the short epilogue, “I have fought my battle and now withdraw.”

Anu Komsi

Anu Komsi (born 1967) is one of Finland’s foremost international singers. Renowned as both an opera singer and concert soloist, she has performed with esteemed orchestras and at major venues such as La Scala Milan and the Opéra National de Paris, as well as festivals like the Lucerne and Salzburg Festivals and the BBC Proms. In March 2024, The Telegraph praised Komsi in heavenly terms: “Her extraordinary soprano voice seemed to float down from an angelic realm, but as it descended, it became human and consoling.”

In the 2024–2025 season, Anu Komsi will appear as a soloist with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and the Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne, as well as with the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra. She will also sing in Kaija Saariaho's opera Innocence at the Semperoper Dresden and perform with the BBC Symphony Orchestra at London’s Barbican Centre.

Komsi’s repertoire spans from early baroque to contemporary music and jazz. Her opera roles total nearly 80, and she has premiered hundreds of works. Her artistic contributions have been recognised with numerous awards.

Kristian Sallinen

Finnish conductor Kristian Sallinen (born 2001) made his international debut with the Symphony Orchestra Basel in June 2023. In the 2023–2024 season, Sallinen debuted with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Bern Symphony Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra (Ireland), and the Ulster Orchestra. In addition to the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, Sallinen has collaborated with several leading domestic orchestras, such as the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Lahti Symphony Orchestra, the Tampere and Turku Philharmonics, and the Tapiola Sinfonietta.

Kristian Sallinen’s 2024–2025 season includes returns to the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Lahti Symphony Orchestra, as well as debuts with the Luxembourg Philharmonic Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Västerås Sinfonietta, among others.

Sallinen’s musical background is in the violin and the viola, having achieved success at the Finnish National Viola Competition. He currently studies orchestral conducting with Sakari Oramo at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki.