Kaija Saariaho: 11 Important Works

Kaija Saariaho, the poetic and highly effective composer who died on Friday at 70, was additionally delicate and suggestive with phrases.

“Dazzling, totally different surfaces, tissues, textures,” she wrote of an early work, in language that would describe her fashion over 40 years. “Weights, gravity. To be blinded. Interpolations. Reflections. Death. The sum of impartial worlds. Shading, refracting the colour.”

Her music shivers and glimmers however by no means lacks forcefulness; lush and infrequently ominous, veiled in darkish thriller, her items evolve with the muscular sinuousness of snakes. Her scores can evoke the glint and glare of staring on the solar — its magnificence, its harshness, its burning afterimage — but additionally the slowly dizzying churn of the depths of the ocean.

Saariaho’s preoccupations have been clear virtually from the start of her profession till its far too early finish: guiding digital and acoustic devices into contemporary alchemies of coloration, mild and mass; the creation of seething stillness; the swiftness with which seeming solidity collapses into nothingness. Here are 11 works that provide an introduction to her seductive, if generally forbidding, world.

‘Verblendungen’ (1984)

Trained as a strict serialist, Saariaho was uncovered within the early Eighties to the sonic haze of spectralist composers like Tristan Murail and Gérard Grisey. This, coupled together with her time at Ircam, the French institute of digital music, pulled her from her early musical path towards an exploration of the connection between acoustic devices and digital sounds, generally taped and generally produced stay. In “Verblendungen” (a posh phrase which means, amongst different issues, “delusions”), taped sounds and a stay ensemble collectively take a journey of gradual dissolution from crushing density to spare, quivering particles.

‘Du Cristal’ (1989)

Half of a linked pair of items (with “ … à la Fumée”) for big orchestra — her entry into composing for grand symphonic forces — “Du Cristal” additionally has an important half for synthesizer, although Saariaho integrates the digital and the acoustic right into a single, shifting, harmful mass. Strands of solo devices emerge from a billowing cloud of sound, poised between meditation and violence.

The uncommon Saariaho work to not embody an digital part, “Graal Théâtre” (“Grail Theater”) is a haunting violin concerto in an exuberantly virtuosic mode — its calligraphic solo line darting, firstly, amid bells and tender droning that shifts out and in of focus. Near the top, the accompaniment explodes earlier than leaving the violinist alone within the closing moments.

‘Miranda’s Lament’ (1997)

Before her first opera, Saariaho ventured into writing for voice, together with setting texts from “The Tempest” — amongst them Miranda’s plea to her father, Prospero, to calm the storm he has created. The chamber instrumentation is intimate and swish, and the soprano’s line is each expressively pained and plainly pretty, with a mix that lengthy fascinated this composer: modern colours blended with the deceptively easy formality of medieval and Renaissance tune.

‘Oltra Mar’ (1999)

As sensual as Saariaho’s music will get, the refrain’s sound on this seven-part, 22-minute work hovers like bars of sunshine, the sides smokily blurred. The temper is otherworldly; the topic is journeys, which really feel extra existential than bodily. Electronic sounds rumble in “Memory of Waves”; dying, the theme of the penultimate part, is adopted by the hypnotic unfolding of “Arrival.”

For her first opera, Saariaho, working with the author Amin Maalouf, created a stylized imaginative and prescient of the lifetime of the Twelfth-century troubadour Jaufré Rudel, who falls in love with a countess he’s by no means met. Luxuriant contemplation reigns; there may be little plot, however ardour surges within the restraint, with tastes of medieval harmonies and North African rhythms.

‘Sept Papillons’ (2000)

For all her talent at dealing with giant ensembles, Saariaho’s solos — together with this set of miniatures for cello — have a particular focus and freedom, a human somewhat than mythic scale. And, as with Bach’s cello music, virtually ceaseless movement right here has the uncanny, sudden impact of encouraging reflection.

‘Aile du Songe’ (2001)

Few modern composers have devoted as a lot power as Saariaho did to writing for the flute, which she mined for its keening eloquence, its reverberations of the primitive and its human connection: the ever-audible breath. This concerto wanders, dreamlike, fluttering and — within the second half — dancing, its power infectious.

An impressive use of a sprawling orchestra, full with organ, this piece — impressed by the hunter of Greek mythology and the constellation that shares his title — begins as a moody nocturne earlier than boiling over into pummeling fury. “Winter Sky,” the second half, is as expansive as its title, with the trembling of infinite stars; and “Hunter,” the finale, is a ferocious sprint.

‘D’om le Vrai Sens’ (2010)

Saariaho was impressed by a cycle of medieval tapestries to write down a clarinet concerto — one which asks its soloist to maneuver across the efficiency house — structured enigmatically in accordance with the 5 senses: the kaleidoscopic colours of “Hearing”; “Sight” woozy and wailing; “Smell” simmering; “Touch” alert and as brilliant as Saariaho’s music will get; “Taste” unsettled and grumbling. The sixth part, the title of which interprets roughly to “According to my need alone,” is likely one of the spookiest and most lovely items in her physique of labor, a quietly disorienting cave stuffed with otherworldly calls and responses.

‘Innocence’ (2018)

Written earlier than the pandemic, which brought on its premiere to be delayed till 2021, “Innocence” is as densely plotted as “L’Amour de Loin” was spare. The stark but delicate story of a shooting at a world faculty, and its echoes years later, the rating is Saariaho’s masterpiece, confidently guiding the determined temper in a combination of singing, talking (in seven languages) and eerie Finnish folks chant. All these disparate vocal worlds are linked by the orchestra, which wraps across the singers evenly and sleekly — by no means explicitly underlining them, by no means competing.