Concert review | Lapland's nature creates strange magic in Outi Tarkiainen's song

Classic

Tapiola Sinfonietta at Espoo Cultural Center 1.2. Eva Ollikainen, conductor, Virpi Räisänen, mezzo-soprano. – Tarkiainen, Mahler.

Lapland nature creates strange magic Outi Tarkiainen in a nine-part orchestral song series in Sami Eanan, giđa nieida (Earth, daughter of spring, 2015).

The words were translated into Finnish in the manual, but it's just a shame that it was so dark in Tapiolasal that you couldn't follow them Virpi Räisänen I sing and Eva Ollikainen during the fascinating and magical performance of the Tapiola Sinfonietta.

Poems are from six different authors. They are in Sámi or translated into Sámi from Finland. The song series tells the story, in the Prologue, a mother and daughter wander through the fells against the wind. In the last part, the Epilogue, a girl child is born in the middle of the snow, to whom the mother and daughter begin to sing a summer song.

The poems are full of suggestive language images describing northern nature. Even the satellite can be seen as a sign of the technological modern age.

Tarkiainen has created a spacious and modern melodious landscape of the language pictures, where the different, constantly changing phenomena of Lapland's nature have been abstracted into a personal, poetic music that breathes from the cold, but very emotional. The transparent orchestration is sometimes light, sometimes it thickens tensely like a snowstorm.

In addition to the physical relationship with nature, the love of a daughter and a mother and at the same time a connection to the continuum of generations is also essential.

Slender sprig Räisäsen has an expressive, dark mezzo-soprano whose colors and registers she skillfully used when moving from one emotional state of the songs to another. Sometimes you could hear coloraturas, like in a baroque opera. The pain erupted dramatically. It seemed to be born out of the exploitation of the Sámi lands and climate stress.

Conductor Eva Ollikainen painted the moments of beauty and terror of the fell hike very accurately and airily.

Nature also spoke by Gustav Mahler in the first, D major symphony, which begins with the awakening of spring, the blossoming of the hand and the chirping of birds. Although the sounds of nature are easy to recognize, Mahler often makes everything sound very strange and alienating.

In the wandering course of the symphony, there is a lot of nightmarish, grotesque and gaudy moments among the moments of joy, pleasure and euphoria.

Tapiola Sinfonietta was performed by the conductor from the symphony by Klaus Simon chamber version made by Its specialty is the grand piano, which is
sometimes screeching, thundering in the storm of the finale.

The difference to the large Mahler orchestra was not particularly emphasized in the small Tapiolasal, because Ollikainen made Tapio's Sinfonietta play colorfully and richly with his inspiring and wide-ranging elegant gestures. Chamber music transparency was an advantage, but that's what Mahler's music usually requires, even when played with a large orchestra.