i’ve commented before on my general disinterest, and usual disregard, for music festival themes. Musica Nova, Helsinki’s biennial new music extravaganza, opted for ‘together’ as its theme this year, and while that word is sufficiently vague as to have almost no meaning, there were numerous times when that word insinuated its way into my consciousness while considering what we were hearing.
Together doesn’t necessarily mean connected, after all, which was certainly true of ‘Spheres’, a music and dance performance devised by harpsichordist Marianna Henriksson and choreographer Anna Mustonen. Taking place in Pannuhalli, the city’s grandly repurposed former cable factory, the event comprised three parts, composed by Shiva Feshareki, Justina Repečkaitė and Lauri Supponen. Henriksson was joined by Petteri Pitko playing a small chamber organ, alongside dancers Anna Maria Häkkinen, Mira Kautto and Marlon Moilanen. What was most surprising, and frustrating, about two of the three works was the qualitative difference between sound and movement. From the composers we heard music with a clear sense of either process or narrative, a demonstrative sense of direction and purpose; from the dancers, a seemingly half-hearted attempt to react to the music with varying levels of energy, though rarely more than lukewarm. Active and passive respectively, and while that took nothing away from the interest generated by the music, that was hardly the point of the performance.
Nonetheless, Feshareki’s For Marianna (for “Double Manual Harpsichord in 1⁄4 comma Meantone Tuning, Amplified and Encased in Live Tape Echo”) explored a hypnotic series of overlapping ascending scales and patterns, bringing to mind Shepard tones moving at different rates, which only made the dancers’ vague bouncing around seem absurdly random and unfocused. In Sfäärit [spheres] for harpsichord, organ, and electronics, receiving its first performance, Repečkaitė set up a compelling soundworld balanced between free-wheeling and the sense of something being worked through. Light harpsichord notes and chords were sporadically echoed and accompanied by the organ, in an effective relationship that grew more insistent over time. The three dancers, by contrast, went the other way, ending up collapsed, resting and (i kid you not) smoking.
Only in Supponen’s pohjoinen urkupositiiville [north for positive organ], also a world première, was there a convincing sense that music and movement were working together. Soft, carefully-handled acoustic beats were perfectly aligned with two dancers slowly rising, one supporting the other, eventually beginning to move more freely. The music’s gradual elaboration, lingering on certain intervals for a while (minor third, tritone, major third), had a similar focus in the dancers’ demeanour, linking and joining together, culminating in them rapidly circling the organ, an expression of joy perhaps, except for one dancer, seemingly caught up in a private reverie. Overall, from the perspective of ‘together’, one couldn’t help feeling that the music was doing most of the real work, with the dance a largely ineffective and arguably unnecessary contribution.
Movement and / or theatrical elements didn’t feature in many of the other events, but when it did it had similarly mixed results. Nowhere more so than in ‘Surroundings’, a concert given by local heroes defunensemble in G Livelab, a bar-cum-performance space with intimidating six-foot-high speakers and such stunning soundproofing the passing trams outside were rendered completely silent. This was one of several events at Musica Nova where i was struck by the important distinction between music that’s entertaining and music that’s entertainment. There’s a world of difference between the two, and this simple fact has become increasingly vital to bear in mind while navigating through new music concerts these days. Apropos Carola Bauckholt‘s Vakuum Lieder and Arash Yazdani‘s Instruction Manual of How To Learn Stop Worrying and Love The Bomb in 5 Minutes, two works that engage with sound primarily as a vehicle for amusement rather than something more cogently musical. Both pieces elicited huge waves of laughter from the audience, so presumably the composers’ meagre ambitions were realised.
Yuri Umemoto‘s aug.hocket, on the other hand, managed to entertain from the context of an urgent, rather wild duet for cello and fixed media, the latter augmenting the gestures of the former, beyond the range of the instrument. Complemented with projections at the back of the stage, reinforcing the words we were hearing, the performance was both punchy and poetic – almost like a cello-based burst of slam poetry – a surprising but highly effective combination. More intriguing was the concert opener, Áki Ásgeirsson‘s 294°, featuring the ensemble’s ever-versatile clarinettist Mikko Raasakka articulating positions on a yoga mat within an elaborate hyper-natural soundscape, filled with vivid quantities of bubble, burble and squelch. The fact that the clarinet was often hard to make out only added to Raasakka’s zen-like demeanour, an individual calmly and quietly focused within chaotic, noisy surroundings.
But the highlight of the event was almost entirely non-theatrical. Umwelt I-III, performed by Finn Sami Klemola on modular synths, mixed slow, gentle evolutions with more aggressive noise. Over time it brought to mind the way the evening had begun, with quasi-organic stuff churning and bubbling, while retaining a layer of more overtly electronic sound within that continued to progress slowly. Were we moving between these distinct layers? Were they merely being heard together or were they actually connected: states of change or states of difference? Klemola didn’t resolve this fascinating liminality but instead broke it down, then ramped up to a powerful seething climax, emerging beyond into a chorus of dancing synth patterns, continuing to meld concrete and abstract sounds to the end.
One noteworthy piece that promised something grandly theatrical but turned out to be, in the best possible sense, the opposite, was Maaemo for solo kantele by Tomi Räisänen. Its title translates to ‘earth mother’, and soloist Eva Alkula was attired in the most fantastical costume, its flamboyance undercut by the realisation it had been constructed from plastic, cans, bags and other bits of trash. Having solemnly processed into the space – Helsinki’s gorgeous House of Nobility, which only made her entrance seem even more important – she set to work with laser focus on the kantele.
From introductory material akin to folk-like scalic flourishes, she continued via less tangible string friction of different speeds, the rhythms, patterns and squeals emanating from the instrument all highly vivid. Though Alkula’s appearance suggested otherwise, Räisänen kept the music grounded (or should that be earthed?), tempering its final flourishes and closing with a contemplative coda that left me feeling as reverberant as the kantele.
The concert featuring Tomi Räisänen’s Maaemo can be streamed from Finnish radio; the piece begins around 5:45.
