Kaija Saariaho

born on 14/10/1952 in Helsinki, Uusimaa, Finland

Kaija Saariaho

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Kaija Saariaho (Finnish pronunciation: [kij sriho]) (née Laakkonen, born 14 October 1952) is a Finnish composer.

Kaija Saariaho studied composition in Helsinki, Freiburg and Paris, where she has lived since 1982. Her studies and research at IRCAM have had a major influence on her music and her characteristically luxuriant and mysterious textures are often created by combining live music and electronics. Although much of her catalogue comprises chamber works, from the mid-nineties she has turned increasingly to larger forces and broader structures, such as the opera Lamour de loin, premiered at the 2000 Salzburg Festival[1] (with a US premiere at the Santa Fe Opera in 2002), and Oltra mar for chorus and orchestra, commissioned by the New York Philharmonic. Her second opera, Adriana Mater, was commissioned for the Opéra National de Paris 2006 season. Her second string quartet, Terra Memoria, was commissioned for the Emerson Quartet by Carnegie Hall for a June 2007 premiere. The third opera, Émilie, has the life and death of Émilie du Châtelet as its topic. The librettist of all of the three operas is Amin Maalouf.

Life and work

Kaija Saariaho was born in Helsinki, where she attended the Helsinki Rudolf Steiner School, a school with a strong arts and music curriculum, for thirteen years[2] and studied violin and piano at the Sibelius Academy. She later studied in Freiburg (under Brian Ferneyhough and Klaus Huber) and at IRCAM in Paris. Most critics, however, cite spectral music composers Gérard Grisey and Tristan Murail as her largest influences. Her work in the 1980s and 1990s is marked by its emphasis on timbre and use of electronics alongside traditional instruments; Nymphéa (Jardin secret III) (1987), for example, is for string quartet and live electronics. It contains an additional vocal element: the musicians whispering the words to a poem by Tarkovsky. In the late 1990s Saariaho began to expand beyond electronics, often writing strictly acoustic pieces, focusing increasingly on melody.

Saariaho was influenced by post-serialism, but she grew to find it too restrictive: "You were not allowed to have pulse, or tonally oriented harmonies, or melodies. I don't want to write music through negations. Everything is permissible as long as it's done in good taste."

She has won the Prix Italia and, in 1989, the Prix Ars Electronica; received commissions from Lincoln Center for the Kronos Quartet and from IRCAM for the Ensemble Intercontemporain; and has been the subject of a pan-European collaborative project to produce a CD-ROM Prisma about her work.

In 2000 she won the Nordic Council Music Prize for the work Lonh for soprano and electronics.

She was awarded the title Musician of the Year 2008 (announced by Musical America, the US publishing company for performing arts), for being "among the few contemporary composers to achieve public acclaim as well as universal critical respect".

Invited by Walter Fink, she was the 20th composer featured in the annual Komponistenporträt of the Rheingau Musik Festival in 2010, the second female composer after Sofia Gubaidulina. Music included Sept Papillons for cello solo (2000), played by Anssi Karttunen, and Quatre Instants for soprano and piano (2002), performed by Pia Freund and David Lively. An orchestral concert with the SWR Sinfonieorchester, conducted by Susanna Mälkki, featured Aile du songe, a flute concerto with soloist Camilla Hoitenga, and Laterna Magica.[3]

Career highlights

  • 197681 studied composition with Paavo Heininen at the Sibelius Academy, Helsinki
  • 1982 attended courses in computer music at IRCAM, Paris and took up residence there
  • 1986 awarded Kranichsteiner Prize at Darmstadt
  • 1989 awarded Ars Electronica Prize for Stilleben and Io; one year residency at the University of San Diego
  • 1991 composition of ballet music Maa, premiered by Finnish National Ballet[4]
  • 2003 awarded the Grawemeyer Award for Lamour de loin
  • 2011 Léonie Sonning Music Prize
  • 2011 Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording[5]

Key works

  • Verblendungen (1984; orchestra, electronics)
  • Lichtbogen (1986; flute, percussion, piano, harp, strings, live electronics)
  • Io (1987; large ensemble, electronics)
  • Nymphéa (1987; string quartet, electronics)
  • Petals (1988; cello, electronics)
  • Du cristal... (1989; orchestra, live electronics)
  • ...à la Fumée (1990; solo alto flute and cello, orchestra)
  • Graal théâtre (1994; violin, orchestra)
  • Lamour de loin (2000; opera)[6]
  • Orion (2002; orchestra)
  • Adriana Mater (2005; opera)
  • La Passion de Simone (2006; oratorio/opera)
  • Notes on Light (2007; cello concerto)
  • Terra Memoria (2007; string quartet)
  • Laterna Magica, 2008
  • Émilie (2010; opera)
  • D'OM LE VRAI SENS (2010; clarinet concerto)

Selected Recordings

Footnotes

  1. Kaija Saariaho gets lots of love for Love from Afar. The Toronto Star. Retrieved on 2012-02-03.
  2. Pirkko Moisala, Kaija Saariaho, p. 2
  3. Die Reinheit der Luft nach dem Regenschauer Gerd Döring in Frankfurter Rundschau, 25 July 2010
  4. NY Times review by Alastair Macaulay, 23 September 2010, of the American premiere of Maa at Columbia University's Miller Theater
  5. Suomalaissäveltäjälle Grammy-palkinto (Finnish). Iltalehti. iltalehti.fi (14 February 2011). Retrieved on 14 February 2011.
  6. Robert Everett-Green (2012-01-27). Kaija Saariaho is looking for love in Canada. The Globe and Mail. Retrieved on 2012-02-03.

External links

This page was last modified 06.09.2012 02:47:16

This article uses material from the article Kaija Saariaho from the free encyclopedia Wikipedia and it is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.