The Dawn Arises: Music of Finnish Women
SMO’s renowned soprano Maria Männistö curates a concert of music celebrating the return of the summer’s light and the artistry of Finnish women. Guest composer Maija Hynninen’s new arrangement of . . . sicut aurora procedit features Männistö and violinist Eric Rynes, and the pair also perform Lotta Wennäkoski’s stunningly virtuosic Valo joka. Hear music by the late Kaija Saariaho: a chamber arrangement of music from the end of her opera L’amour de loin and an open score by Rebecka Ahvenniemi. Hynninen’s stunning large ensemble work Mobiles closes the program.
PROGRAM:
KAIJA SAARIAHO: Vers toi qui es si loin (2016)
MAIJA HYNNINEN: Mobiles (2022)
MAIJA HYNNINEN: . . . sicut aurora procedit (2025; original version 2015) – World Premiere
LOTTA WENNÄKOSKI: Valo joka (2016)
REBECKA AHVENNIEMI: Tacit-citat-ion (2018)
REBECKA AHVENNIEMI: Death of a Christmas Tree (2014)
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ABOUT THE CURATOR:
Finnish-American soprano Maria Männistö delights in exploring the vast range of human expression through music, be it classical repertoire, demanding contemporary works, Scandinavian folk singing, or her own compositions. She has premiered numerous works, including Wayne Horvitz’ Smokestack Arias at ACT Theatre and Garrett Fisher’s Kocho at the Galapagos Art Space in New York. As soloist, she has appeared with Seattle Symphony, Pacific Northwest Ballet, EOS Kammeroper Köln, Seattle Metropolitan Chamber Orchestra, and Seattle Modern Orchestra. She recently performed excerpts from her monodrama HÄMÄRÄ at Helsinki Musiikkitalo as a part of the Suomi-Seura “Suomi 100 Maailmalla” concert. Maria has performed over 40 recitals worldwide, and has performed and recorded with Vlaams Radiokoor, Emerald Ensemble, Solaris, and The Tudor Choir. She serves as organist and music director at the Finnish Lutheran Church in Seattle, and performs frequently at Nordic events around the Pacific Northwest.
ABOUT THE COMPOSERS:
Kaija Saariaho (1952-2023) was a leading voice of her generation of composers, in her native Finland and worldwide. She studied composition in Helsinki, Freiburg and Paris, where she lived from 1982 to her death. Her studies and research at IRCAM, the Parisian center for electroacoustic experimentation, had a major influence on her music, and her characteristically luxuriant and mysterious textures were often created by combining live performance and electronics.
After her breakthrough piece Lichtbogen for ensemble and electronics in 1986, Saariaho gradually expanded her musical expression to a great variety of genres, and her chamber pieces and choral music have become staples of instrumental and vocal ensembles, respectively.
She rose to international preeminence as the composer of works taken up by symphony orchestras around the world, such as Oltra Mar (1999), Orion (2002), Laterna Magica (2008) and Circle Map (2012), as well as six concertos (including Graal Théâtre for violin in 1994 and Notes on Light for cello in 2006), and five major symphonic song cycles (e.g. Château de l’âme in 1995 and True Fire in 2014), all of which bear the mark of her relentless attempt to blend the scientific, technological and rational with an approach grounded in poetic inspiration and resulting in deeply sensorial and associative experiences.
Saariaho’s broadest public and critical recognition came from her work in the field of opera: L’Amour de loin (2000), Adriana Mater (2006), La Passion de Simone (2006), Émilie (2010), Only the Sound Remains (2016) and Innocence (2020), the latter of which was termed Saariaho’s ‘masterpiece’ by The New York Times, were all warmly received at their premieres, and have enjoyed the rare privilege of global tours and multiple stage productions. Their ever-expressive treatment of voice and orchestra, as much as their commitment to renewing the form and the array of stories being represented on the largest stages, have made these six very different opuses classics of 21st-century opera already in the composer’s lifetime.
Saariaho claimed major composing awards such as the Grawemeyer Award, the Nemmers Prize, the Sonning Prize and the Polar Music Prize and two of her recordings have received Grammy Awards. She was named ‘Greatest Living Composer’ in a survey of her peers conducted by the BBC Music Magazine in 2019.
Kaija Saariaho’s life was prematurely interrupted by a brain tumor in 2023. Her musical legacy is carried forward by a broad network of collaborators with whom she has worked closely over the years, and her publisher Chester Music Ltd.
Maija Hynninen (b. 1977) works in concert music, electronic instrument design and multidisciplinary performances. The essence of her music builds on the unique moments where the parameters of this world are slightly altered to allow a glimpse of another reality to be present. It can be a moment where the timbre of purely acoustical writing gives surprising results or when electronics project sounds into another domain, another space and reality. Her work has been described as “etherical” and “highly skillful,” that builds into “a strongly unifying musical arc” (Helsingin Sanomat), “fascinating experience,” and with “strong association to nature” (Hufvudstadsbladet). Maija’s music has been presented and commissioned by, among others, YLE (Finnish National Broadcasting Company), Divertimento Ensemble, Ensemble Mise-En, Helsinki Chamber Choir, Avanti! Chamber Orchestra, Quince Ensemble, Earplay, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Kyle Bruckmann, Susanne Kujala, Mirka Malmi, Camilla Hoitenga, Eija Kankaanranta, Anni Haapaniemi and Heather Roche. She has been featured in numerous festivals in Finland and abroad such as Music nova Helsinki, Tampere Biennale, Nordic Music Days, EXPO Milan 2015, San Francisco Tape Music Festival, Mise-En Music Festival, NYCEMF, ECCO, Acanthes Festival and ISCM. Maija holds a PhD in Music Composition from UC Berkeley where she studied with Franck Bedrossian, Carmine Cella, Edmund Campion, Cindy Cox, Myra Melford and Ken Ueno. Previously, she studied at the Sibelius Academy under the guidance of Paavo Heininen while also working on a violin diploma at the Norwegian Academy of Music. She has complemented her studies in electronics at IRCAM.
Maija was awarded the Eisner Prize for Highest Achievement in the Creative Arts and the Nicola de Lorenzo Prize in Music Composition by UC Berkeley. In 2021, she won the George Ladd Prix de Paris prize by UC Berkeley for a one-year residency in Paris. She is the recipient of numerous artist grants from the Arts Promotion Centre Finland and the Finnish Cultural Foundation.
Lotta Wennäkoski (born 1970) is a composer based in Helsinki, Finland. Her output consists of orchestral, chamber and vocal works, and her pieces are frequently performed worldwide. In 2017 BBC commissioned Wennäkoski an orchestral work Flounce, the premier of which was at the Last Night of the Proms in 2017. It has later been performed around 50 times by now. Among later commissions one can mention the string quartet Pige (2022) for the Danish String Quartet, the harp concerto Sigla (2022) for Sivan Magen and the Finnish RSO and the violin concerto Prosoidia (2022-23) for Ilya Gringolts and BBC Symphony Orchestra. Wennäkoski has been awarded Finland’s State Prize of Music in 2020. The Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra has recorded Wennäkoski’s orchestral music in 2015 (Soie) and in 2022 (Sigla) – both for the label Ondine. In October 2023, the latter was awarded the Gramophone Award 2023 for the contemporary music category.
Rebecka Sofia Ahvenniemi (Ph.D.) is a philosopher, composer, and writer living in Oslo. She was born in Finland but moved to Norway in 2004. Today Rebecka is an artistic research fellow at the Norwegian Academy of Music. Rebecka studied at the University of Bergen, the University of Helsinki, Freie Universitet Berlin, and Columbia University. She finished her doctoral degree in philosophy in the fall 2021 with the thesis Musical Composition as Lingering Reflection. Exploring the Critical Potential of Music. Further, she has taught composition at the Grieg academy in Bergen and Musikkhøgskolen in Oslo. She has also been a lecturer at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Bergen. Rebecka was a board member of the Arts Council Norway from 2020 to 2023. She was a committee member of “Turné og virksomhetsstøtte” from 2016 to 2023, and the leader since 2018. She was a board member of the Norwegian Society of Composers from 2013 to 2018. Further, she was the board leader of the concert series Avgarde from 2019 to 2020. Rebecka was engaged as the house composer of KODE in Bergen in 2022. She was also the festival composer of Kaustinen Chamber Music Festival in September 2022.