February 21, 2007

Lumen de lumine

A profile of Kaija Saariaho.
Boston Globe, February 21, 2007.

4 comments:

PWS said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
PWS said...

Amens all around. You managed to give a good idea of her very strange and very hard to explain soundworld and style in a short article.

I tried and failed once, here:
http://skittlesmaze.blogspot.com/2005/12/trees-that-weep-incense.html

Eager to hear her newer work on disc hopefully sometime soon as I don't forsee any Saariaho in Minneapolis anytime soon. I did beg the Music Department here at the University to invite her for the Contemporary Composer Festival in 2008. They chose Boulez. I didn't even think we could get him, but we did...
Any news of upcoming recordings? Amazon doesn't seem to have much but she has a surprisingly large number of existing recordings.

Matthew said...

I'm not sure what's in the works, but there's actually a surprising amount of her stuff on iTunes; the latest up there is the suite from "L'Amour de loin" (with Saraste conducting, a gorgeous reading) along with "Oltra mar" and a new recording of "Nymphea Reflected." There's also a live performance of "Je sens un deuxiéme coeur" from DG, with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Apparently Welser-Möst and Cleveland have recorded "Orion" on their own label, but I haven't heard it. For the old stuff, "Près" (a favorite of mine) is also on iTunes, and "Verblendungen," which rocks, is part of the Naxos Music Library, if you or your institution has access.

Ben zander said...

Dear Matthew,

I very much enjoyed your piece in the Globe on Saariahho and was delioghted to hear that you would be covering tonight's concert. I thought I should invite you to attend the pre-concert lecture, if you are so inclined, because there are a few quite interesting things about the structure of the Sibelius that might intrigue you. It's at 6.45

warm wishes

Ben Zander
bz@benjaminzander.com