3 minute read
Lotta Wennaköski: Verdigris
LOTTA WENNÄKOSKI (BORN 1970)
VERDIGRIS (2015)
– APPROX 11 MINS –
LONDON PREMIERE
How to refer to the music of Jean Sibelius in a way that would hopefully lead to something personal and fruitful in 2015? Not an easy task. It is clear that I cannot touch the soundness of the symphonies that I sincerely love. I soon came to think of the tone-poem En Saga, which I find less close yet full of musical energy. The piece also contains some gestures that fit my orchestral ideas more than well – the string arpeggios and the backbeat rhythms, for example. So why not continue the fairytale?!
‘If only his musical intuition were a little less capricious’, wrote the critic Karl Flodin about En Saga in 1893. My aim is thus to be as capricious as I can with the material picked up from Sibelius’s work. Another impulsive choice is to also quote another piece by Sibelius at the end of my work: I couldn’t help including a howling moment from the Andante Festivo. It is a work deeply rooted in the Finnish consciousness, especially if you have grown up playing a string instrument.
The title Verdigris refers to patina – a thin layer on a surface that is produced by age. The word originally comes from a pigment called ‘green of Greece’. Isn’t that more or less what composers do – write new layers on music history, even if their work explicitly refers to older music? Hopefully the patina of Verdigris is green, too.
Lotta Wennäkoski
LOTTA WENNÄKOSKI
COMPOSER PROFILE: LOTTA WENNÄKOSKI
Lotta Wennäkoski (born 1970 in Helsinki, Finland) initially studied violin, music theory and Hungarian folk music at the Béla Bartók Conservatory in Budapest. She then studied music theory and composition at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, receiving her diploma in 2000. Her main composition teachers have been Eero Hämeenniemi, Kaija Saariaho and Paavo Heininen. From 1998/99, Wennäkoski studied in the Netherlands with Louis Andriessen.
Wennäkoski’s debut concert took place at the Musica Nova Helsinki festival in 1999. Her orchestral piece Sakara was commissioned by Esa-Pekka Salonen, who also conducted the premiere with the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra in 2003. The stage work N! (Woman’s Love and Life) was premiered at the Helsinki Festival the same year, and was nominated for the Nordic Council Music Prize in 2004. Ten years later, in 2014, Wennäkoski was nominated again – this time for her work Jong for juggler and chamber orchestra.
Important performances of Wennäkoski’s works also include the premiere of the flute concerto Soie by Petri Alanko and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra in 2009 – chosen for the list of recommended works at the International Rostrum of Composers in 2012 – and the mini opera Lelele at the Musica Nova Helsinki 2011, performed by soprano Pia Freund and Plus Ensemble. The monodrama was subsequently performed at the Maerzmusik (Berlin), Warsaw Autumn and Huddersfield festivals. In March 2012 Wennäkoski was one of the featured composers at the 17th Other Minds Festival in San Francisco.
A CD of Wennäkoski’s chamber music, Culla d’aria, was released in 2008 by Alba Records. Her orchestral music has been recorded by the the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra – the CD Soie was released on the Ondine label in 2015. Lotta Wennäkoski was Artistic Co-ordinator of the Tampere Biennale festival from 2008–10, and Composer-in-Residence of the Tapiola Sinfonietta during the 2010/11 season. In 2017 she was the artistic planner for the Avanti! Summer Sounds Festival. The same year, the BBC commissioned the orchestral work Flounce, the premiere of which was given at the Last Night of the BBC Proms in September 2017. Another premiere, Uniin asti for male choir and orchestra, took place at the Helsinki Music Centre in December the same year. The following year, the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra commissioned the chamber work Hele, the premiere of which took place in November 2018 at the Walt Disney Hall in Los Angeles, conducted by Susanna Mälkki.
In summer 2019 Wennäkoski was the guest composer at the Korsholm Music Festival in Finland. The same year, the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra commissioned her Om fotspår och ljus, which was premiered in September 2019. Wennäkoski is currently working on a commission from the Savonlinna Opera Festival. The libretto is by Laura Voipio, and it tells the story of philosopher Søren Kierkegaard’s fiancée, Regine Olsen.
