Something So Transporting Bright

Metcalf, Harrison, Järventausta, Coates
Kreutzer Quartet, Roderick Chadwick, piano
Métier, 2025

The UK-based Kreutzer Quartet, known for their busy commissioning schedule and composition workshops, brings together commissioned works from two of their long-standing partners and two emerging composers. Joel Järventausta (b. 1995), a Finnish composer who studied in the UK, stands out with his piece On Blue (2020).

This is Järventausta’s first venture into the string quartet genre, striking a feasible balance between tradition and freshness. Violinist of the Kreutzer Quartet Peter Sheppard Skærved suggested a watercolour seascape by J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851) as an inspiration. The colour blue has to do with both the shade of the painting and the music, but it also reflects the isolation of the Covid years and Järventausta’s synaesthesia. The texture is light like a watercolour, the sea appearing as a swirling spaciousness that captures both weight and void. On Blue is a tone poem cast in chamber music, neatly avoiding the obvious emulation of Impressionism that one could expect Turner to elicit.

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Sebastian Fagerlund: Autumn Equinox, Arcantio, Sky II

Lapland Chamber Orchestra, Niek de Groot, John Storgårds
BIS, 2025

The opera Syyssonaatti [Autumn Sonata] (2016) marked a turning point in the output of composer Sebastian Fagerlund. As recently as in 2023, he was still processing its material in his violin concerto Helena’s Song. The Lapland Chamber Orchestra’s recording features Fagerlund’s octet Autumn Equinox (2016), also an offshoot of the opera. It forms the bridge between his early and later work, the latter being represented by a new version of his ensemble piece Sky (2008),originally written for Baroque instruments.

According to Fagerlund, Syyssonaatti introduced a dimension of soaring melodic arcs into his music, and his double bass concerto Arcantio comes across as a meditation on this theme. Custom-made for Niek de Groot, the solo part is a web of instinct-driven humming, introspection and healing spells. Structured as a set of variations, the concerto develops the double bass melody softly towards a mystical dimension. Compared to the shamanist bassoon concerto Mana (2014), Arcantio is misty and weightless. The blinding dark flashes of lightning characteristic of Fagerlund’s music are here muted into a dim radiance, yet without losing any of their intensity. The Lapland Chamber Orchestra presents a brilliantly wild but controlled expression in Autumn Equinox, where writhing rhythms and obsessive repetitions conjure forth repressed emotions.

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Magnus Lindberg: Viola Concerto, Absence, Serenades

FRSO, Lawrence Power, Nicholas Collon
Ondine, 2024

Magnus Lindberg’s current idiom is at its best when his communication with late Romanticism, Impressionism and his own early style is tangibly anchored in the past. This is the case with Absence (2020) and Serenades (2020), linked by a motif harking back to Beethoven – a motif that can also be heard in Two Episodes (2016).

Working with Beethoven quotes lends brightness and structure to Absence. Serenades shifts between vignettes and monuments, referencing the tradition of night music. The Viola Concerto (2023–2024), commissioned by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, is a showcase for the wonderful talent of Lawrence Power. The work is scored for a lightweight classical orchestra yet also embodies a Sibelian heroism, casting the viola as a super-instrument that incorporates the best features of both the cello and the violin.

It is only natural for the FRSO to record music by a composer with whom they have along-standing relationship, but given the dearth of resources these days one cannot escape the thought that perhaps these resources should be more evenly distributed. Having an orchestral work recorded is a golden opportunity not afforded to many composers. An orchestra such as the FRSO might do well to program a compilation disc of the best of their recent commissioned works.

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And I left the Door Open – Chamber music by Pertti Jalava

Erica Nygård flute, Päivi Severeide harp, Juha-Pekka Vikman violin, Patrik Kleemola guitar, Torsten Tiebout viola, Mikko Multamäki double bass
Pilfink, 2023

Pertti Jalava (b. 1960) brings together neo-Impressionism, jazz and the French chamber tradition in his musical idiom. These chamber music works are characterised by the union of viola, guitar and harp in particular. Yksin veneessä [Alone in the boat] (2009) for double bass and tape was written for Mikko Multamäki, who premiered Jalava’s double bass concerto Sinuhe with the Turku Philharmonic Orchestra in 2023.

Jalava’s work are subdued and poetic landscapes that in their finest moments offer a feeling of premonition that is difficult to pin down. A case in point is Joki kurkottaa läpi helteen [The river reaches out through the heat] (2020) for flute, guitar and viola. Kun heräsit, astuin sisään ja jätin oven auki [When you woke up, I stepped in and left the door open] (2019) for flute, harp and viola is sparse and open to multiple interpretations. It is a continuation of awork written a decade earlier for the same instruments that, though recorded earlier by different performers, should have been included on this album.

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Lost in Naxos

Piia Komsi, Ville Herrala
ASMO1313, 2025

It is not unusual to pair Monteverdi with jazz and improvisation. Here, coloratura soprano Piia Komsi and double bass player Ville Herrala take the Jazzed-up Monteverdi concept to the next level. Through radical improvisation, Lost in Naxos comments on the practice of completing unfinished works, focusing on Monteverdi’s almost completely lost opera Arianna, though adding a handful of lines by female characters in other Monteverdi operas. The harmony and vocal style of the early Baroque have been elided almost completely, and the album is conceived as a conceptual mini-opera, almost meta-theatre. Indeed, the project began as a theatrical collaboration.

The result is fascinating, a catalogue of sounds of a suffering body: hyperventilation, anxious panting and groaning, modern mad scenes. Pining for love is converted into self-destruction, a lament translates into social exclusion. The sounding bodies of a singer and a double bass transform into the island of Naxos, at the same time the stage on which the opera itself is trapped: at the end, Arianna is not saved by Bacchus but by a random actor passing by at the Helsinki City Theatre.

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Esa Helasvuo – E♭A

PihkaSound, 2025

Piano teacher, theatre musician and composer Esa Helasvuo (b. 1945) documents his extensive career in a catalogue of piano improvisations drawing on his diverse output. The album reflects his musical joie de vivre as he explores his past achievements via the keyboard. His pedagogical career can be heard in nods towards the classical piano tradition, while his stage works are manifested in miniature musical numbers. One of the tracks is based on the music for the radio play Sinuhe (1982), dating from Helasvuo’s long tenure as music dramaturge with the Finnish Broadcasting Company’s Radio Theatre. Finnish folk tunes run through the landscape of the album, at times evolving into musical self-portraits, as on the track ‘Tango Husband’.

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In collaboration with Kompositio

Translation Jaakko Mäntyjärvi

Photo Julius Töyrylä