Käsiohjelma: Soikoon! Sävellysopiskelijoiden uusia teoksia Zagros Ensemblelle
10.5.2021 klo 19
Ohjelma/programme
Þorkell Nordal: Formations
Oh Jin Yong Derek: Yearning
Robert Ruohola: Valon portit (Gates of Light)
Sophia Chambon: 3 x 2020
1. Kriisi
2. Kotirauha
3. Kuolema
Vahid Eftekhar-Hosseini: Vojna
Pilar Miralles: Hugs Catalogue for eleven players
Esiintyjät/performers
Zagros Ensemble
Pasi Eerikäinen ja Hannu Vasara, viulu /violin
Olga Reskalenko, alttoviulu / viola
Miika Uuksulainen, sello / cello
Eero Marttila, kontrabasso / double bass
Nairi Azezian, huilu / flute
Paula Malmivaara, oboe
Mikko Raasakka, klarinetti / clarinet
Arvid Larsson, fagotti / bassoon
Tommi Hyytinen, käyrätorvi / horn
Xavi Castello, lyömäsoittimet / percussion
Niina Ranta, piano
Petri Komulainen, kapellimestari / conductor
Teosesittelyt/Program notes
Þorkell Nordal: Formations
Formations contemplates on physical position and its recent significance. In the piece these thoughts manifest in the division of the ensemble into three groups of three players. Each group is treated as a unity, but the effort of each group is perceived as a contribution to a joint sound. During the piece some players step out of their own group and engage with musicians from other groups and the division between the groups disappears. When the separation is imposed again it does not seem to work in the same way as before. In the end each player becomes individual through a simple gesture.
Oh Jin Yong Derek: Yearning
Yearning is inspired by the sound of the heartbeat monitor. It starts off with the Clarinet imitating the constant beep as other instruments start to follow suit, leading to a chaotic mess of sound. As one yearns for the remaining time in this world, a well known lullaby takes over, yearning to sing this to the unborn child while reminiscing the childhood as one was lulled to sleep. However, now, it is to an eternal sleep…
Robert Ruohola: Valon portit (Gates of Light)
Sophia Chambon: 3 x 2020
3 x 2020 imagines three scenes that may have taken place during the COVID19 pandemic. The first part starts with repetitive notes that spread from an instrument to others just like the corona virus itself spreads from a human being to others. This discreet motif is contrasted by a brutal musical crisis that may evoke the society in which a virus spreads, or the mental state of people anxious about contamination or exhausted by isolation.
The second movement is particularily consonant and almost minimalistic, taking time to grow. It is inspired by the peace that Finnish people experienced when they found themselves comfortably at home, spending time with their loved ones and discovering a different rythm of life. It seems that they gained a totally new aspect of the flow of time that slows down when you are not in such a hurry.
The third part evokes the death of a corona patient in a hospital. Throughout the movement one can hear the hearbeats that slow down peacefully before they quicken again until at the end they stop completely. The composition uses a lot of extended techniques that suggest different bodily functions and machines working around the patient.
Sophia Chambon (2001-) is a French and Finnish composer and pianist. She started playing the piano in Vantaa Music Institute in 2008 and has ever since practised music with passion. She started composing quite early and studied it alongside her music theory lessons since 2013. She was accepted as a composition student to the Sibelius Academy Junior department (2018-2020), where she studied with Juhani Nuorvala, and in autumn 2020 she was accepted to the Sibelius Academy as a Bachelor student in Composition as Tapani Länsiö’s student. Sophia is interested in different sonorities, in the numerous possibilities of acoustic instruments and in ways of writing idiomatically for them.
Vahid Eftekhar-Hosseini: Vojna
It all started with my encounter with Lamentations of ”Zagros”, months before I knew that I would have a chance to collaborate with an ensemble with the same name, thousands of kilometers away from my homeland.
Zagros is a long stretch of mountains covering almost a third of the Persian plateau, with a rich variety of ethnicities and cultures, music flowing in their everyday life as they work, make love, and deal with life, and with death.
It was to my great surprise to find some lament songs in the Balkan regions, so similar in spirit to Muyeh from Zagros, reminding me of the one pain the human race experiences regardless of their ”level of civilization”: that of birth and of death.
I am humbled by the enormous depth of these cultures, the master musician Ali Pour-Asadian whose Karna song dominates the piece, and whose craftsmanship I value way beyond my ”art”.
The journey of the piece took a turn by the encounter with a little girl who somehow got caught up in a civil war she did not belong to, and fought her way through life single-handedly, with courage and poetry.
Vahid E. Hosseini Helsinki
May 2021
Pilar Miralles: Hugs Catalogue for eleven players
Hugs Catalogue is a one-movement piece for eleven players whose aim is the expression of the opposition between the physicality of a hug and its different possible interpretations regarding the reached feeling. The physical component of human interaction has acquired certain conventions when it comes to perception and comprehension of its meaning, doing away with the plurality and diversity of possible interpretations and emotional reactions. Moreover, its practice has been influenced by the tendency towards individualism and own’s interest imposed by the current sociopolitical leading environment. This work explores the different sensitive responses to such an apparent act of tenderness, warmth and consolation.
The piece is also written in memoriam Galina Ustvolskaya, one of the most outstanding yet forgotten paragons of the Russian music from the second half of the past century. Ustvolskaya mainly focused on the development of her individual and unique spiritual insight, materialized in this piece through the use of the wooden box (a log drum), which separates the sections of the piece in a ritualistic manner, bringing about a heavy and intense tension and atmosphere, governed by silence and sobriety, and maintained by the behavior of the performers.
Pilar Miralles (1997) is a Spanish composer set in Helsinki. She carried out prior instrumental studies in flute and piano, and holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Composition from Granada, Spain. In 2020 she completed a Master’s Degree in Electroacoustic Composition at the Higher Center of Musical Education “Katarina Gurska” of Madrid, tutored by Sergio Luque. She is currently at her first year of the Master of Music in Composition at the Sibelius Academy of Uniarts Helsinki. She has composed for different ensembles in Spain, Czech Republic, France, Sweden, USA and Finland, and she has received awards from several national and international competitions such as the International Antonín Dvorák Composition Competition, the Île de créations Composition Competition, the SGAE Young Composers Award or the Linköpings Studentsångare Composition Award, among others. Regarding the electroacoustic practice, she is focused on algorithmic and stochastic sound synthesis using SuperCollider programming language, whereas regarding instrumental composition, she seeks a personal idiom based on the use of the rawest and simplest tools of the traditional western music language.