With an oeuvre already spanning more than 90 titles, Cecilia Damström is one of the most established composers of her generation in Finland and internationally. In January, her first full-length opera, Ovllá, premiered in the 2026 European Capital of Culture Oulu, and the Teosto Award-winning ICE marked her BBC Symphony Orchestra debut.
Though a large selection of live recordings of her works can be heard online, only a handful have been released on albums, as part of larger programmes. Reetamaria Rajala’s recording of Damström’s piano works, released by the Finnish label Alba in February, is thus the first recording devoted to Damström’s music. As Damström’s instrumental background is in classical piano, this seems quite fitting, and the Malmö-based Rajala is the ideal interpreter. She has been championing Damström’s piano music since 2018, and included the 10-minute Psychedelic on her album focusing on Nordic minimalism in 2022.
Overall, however, the new album – with the somewhat unimaginative title Stories – serves as an appetiser that leaves you wanting more. A recording of Damström’s remarkable quintet trilogy has already been announced, and the first album featuring her orchestral music is expected soon. Works such as Nixus (2020), Wasteland (2022), the Nordic Music Council Prize nominee Extinctions (2023) and the aforementioned ICE (2021) certainly merit this. A good start was Fretus for string orchestra (2021) on Lohja City Orchestra's recent album.
Orchestral music forms the core of Damström’s composing activities, where she is most at home as she evolves her expression. The piano works, spanning her career from 2009 to 2024, convey the impression of diary entries and study-like miniatures. (There is even a piece of Masonic music, as in Sibelius or Mozart.)
The exception is Unda (2024), a short water-themed piece connected to Damström’s orchestral works inspired by landscapes and ecological data. Fascinating as the opening ripples are, I find Unda’s dramatic arch from pollution to purity unsatisfyingly obvious. The piece also inevitably invites comparison with Ravel’s Ondine, much to Unda’s disadvantage. Instead of creating a vital portrait of the element, Unda treats water as something passive.
For me, the piece reveals the one flaw in Damström’s compositional ethos. Her music tackles major contemporary themes by drawing creative analogies between musical devices and our reality. But if extramusical ideas are stated with unnecessarily obvious signals, the result may be a figurativeness that leaves little room for the listener’s own imagination. An example in the piano works is pounding cluster chords as a marker of conflict.
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The figurative element is balanced in Epitaph (2018), paying homage to Damström’s teacher, composer Jouni Kaipainen (1956–2015): a touching portrait of his musical thinking coupled with a timeless dirge. Characters (2015) is a set of miniatures in the vein of Prokofiev’s Sarcasms, a series of croquis-like miniature drawings of Damström’s former schoolmates. The early piano pieces Psychedelic and Piano delirium are, on the contrary, abstract textural studies. Damström’s piano writing is effortless and flowing, combining elements of Glass-like minimalism and classical piano virtuosity. Her relationship with the instrument has been problematic: as a teenager, her dream of becoming a concert pianist was cut short by a severe strain injury. In hindsight, this may have been a blessing as it turned her towards the composing that always felt so natural to her.
Somewhat fittingly, the work I like best on the album, Shapes (2016/2024), is the only work not originally intended for solo piano, but rather for accordion. A piano version tailored for Rajala works splendidly. The six-part suite nestles on the middle ground between the figurative and non-figurative, as it conjures forth abstract geometrical shapes in all their imposing 3D spatiality.
Shapes captures the visuality at the core of Damström’s musical thinking – her habit of working with visual ideas embedded with extramusical meanings – yet it also reveals the spiritual, even mystical nature that feels imminent in many of her works. Here, if anywhere, there’s room for imagination, as giant forms soar through space: music reflecting an ascending vertical line or an icosahedron (20-sided polygon) take you to a cosmic realm far beyond humankind, a fundamental world of potential and matter.
Rajala deserves praise for her interpretations of these works, which she has been performing as a whole since 2024. She has a sonorous sound and an airy touch, delivering the pulsing rhythms with flowing ease and delightful variation.
Featured photo Tuomas Tenkanen.