# Esa-Pekka Salonen



## Op.123

What do you think of his works, so far I have only heard the violin concerto but I want to hear more.


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## Guest

Check out his Piano Concerto--it's quite a powerhouse. Yefim Bronfman did not think it would be playable at first, but he conquered it! (cue in about 27 minutes to watch the Concerto):


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## Blancrocher

I'm a great fan of Salonen's music--and I'm desperate for more of it! I've gotten so pathetic that I'm hunting around his website for little snatches of future releases. If you click on the link, you'll find 2 minutes of the 5-minute composition "Dona nobis pacem":

http://www.esapekkasalonen.com/compositions/dona-nobis-pacem

Very tantalizing--but I want more! Come on, my friend--chop chop!


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## Weston

I've found Wing on Wing to be just about my favorite 21st century composition. I keep returning to it and hearing new things each time. I mean, who would have thought a monotone lecturer could become musical? Yet, the deep voice contracts with the two sopranos in a spine tingling and very melodic way. And then there's the alleged recorded fish sound. Amazing! 

I too am looking for everything he has done.


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## TresPicos

I think he's a better composer than conductor - and he's a great conductor.


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## Blancrocher

Blancrocher said:


> I'm a great fan of Salonen's music--and I'm desperate for more of it! I've gotten so pathetic that I'm hunting around his website for little snatches of future releases. If you click on the link, you'll find 2 minutes of the 5-minute composition "Dona nobis pacem":
> 
> http://www.esapekkasalonen.com/compositions/dona-nobis-pacem
> 
> Very tantalizing--but I want more! Come on, my friend--chop chop!


I've finally tracked down "Dona nobis pacem" in its entirety. I think it's a wonderful and truly exceptional work, though I'd be interested in the opinions of others with more experience with a cappella choir. As with most of my favorite works by this composer, it has an intoxicating blend of the familiar and the strange (to me).

You can find it at around the 38-minute mark.

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMjU4NTk5MDA0.html

Can't wait for a version to come out on cd!

*p.s.* The concert in the video has a very satisfying program--highly recommended in its entirety.


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## Blancrocher

I've become very taken with Salonen's "Homunculus" for string quartet. So far I've only been able to track down one performance: the Arnica String Quartet in a live concert, available for streaming on the InstantEncore website. I'm looking forward to a commercial recording.

An explanation of the piece's name, from the composer's website:



> I wanted to compose a piece that would be very compact in form and duration, but still contain many different characters and textures. In other words, a little piece that behaves like a big piece.
> 
> I have long been fascinated (and amused) by the arcane spermists' theory, who held the belief that the sperm was in fact a "little man" (homunculus) that was placed inside a woman for growth into a child. This seemed to them to neatly explain many of the mysteries of conception. It was later pointed out that if the sperm was a homunculus, identical in all but size to an adult, then the homunculus may have sperm of its own. This led to a reductio ad absurdum, with an endless chain of homunculi. This was not necessarily considered by spermists a fatal objection however, as it neatly explained how it was that "in Adam" all had sinned: the whole of humanity was already contained in his loins.
> 
> I decided to call my piece Homunculus despite the obvious weaknesses of the spermists' thinking, as I find the idea of a perfect little man strangely moving.


http://www.esapekkasalonen.com/compositions/homunculus


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## Kibbles Croquettes

I don't know Esa-Pekka's music very well, but a few months ago I was in a concert which opened with his piece called Stockholm Diary. I did like it very much. There was humour, dark passages... oh, and those wide uniform chords in which the string orchestra melted into one sonority that wobbled across frequencies (I'm not completely sure what I'm trying to say)!


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## Richannes Wrahms

Sorry but I find your endless rushes of quavers to sound dated at best, the harmony I'd say is average. Considering the program note to Nyx, I think you may benefit from some traditional species counterpoint exercises.


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## Blancrocher

Salonen's latest work, a large-scale composition called "Karawane," for orchestra and chorus. It's based on a text by dada founder Hugo Ball.










Looking forward to getting a recording of this ear-splitting piece, which will allow me to test the endurance of my stereo speakers and my neighbors.


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## MagneticGhost

Is there plans afoot to release this on CD. Hope so. I'm looking forward to expanding my Salonen collection!


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## Blancrocher

MagneticGhost said:


> Is there plans afoot to release this on CD. Hope so. I'm looking forward to expanding my Salonen collection!


I don't know, but I suspect so. I'm hoping it's included on an album with some of his other recent works for chorus--including "Dona nobis pacem," for which I have an unseemly addiction.


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## Blancrocher

A recent choral work, "Iri da iri," which uses text from the end of Dante's Paradiso:

http://www.rtp.pt/play/p593/e212213/musica-contemporanea

Salonen's piece starts a little before the 11-minute mark (the concert also features works by Ingvar Lidholm, George Crumb, and John Corigliano).

Salonen's description of the work is typically bizarre:



> Salonen was also attracted by Dante's command of meter and the interlocking rhyming structure of his three-line stanzas (terza rima). "It works very well in music because it allows you to build chain-like forms" instead of proceeding in a "simple linear way." He points out that because Dante's images are so "mystical and complex" he decided not to try to illustrate the text musically (the age-old device of "madrigalism"). Salonen wanted the words being sung to be understandable and therefore for the most part follows the natural rhythms as they would be spoken in Italian. At the same time, "there are a couple sections where the text dissolves into atoms," evoking for him images of "planets and nebulae" and suggesting a sense of "cosmic movement."
> 
> The result is that Salonen's musical setting of Iri da iri involves "a kind of dualism between using the language as a tool for communication and using it in some cases as material. Sometimes the music moves rather rhythmically and in a more songlike, linear way but there are more densely contrapuntal moments when it follows the laws of the cosmos, as it were, rather than the laws of the language." He offers still another metaphoric image for the musical process Dante's visionary language inspired: "It's like milk being poured into a jar full of water, when you then see how the whiteness of the milk blends with the transparency of the water. On some level it's very simple if you look at it from a distance; but if you look at it close up, you see the incredible complexity of the individual molecules and the unpredictable way the two liquids fuse."


http://www.lamc.org/performances/program-notes/2014-06-08-today-tomorrow-and-beyond

An Italian text and translation of the last canto of Paradiso, for anyone who might like to follow along:

http://www.worldofdante.org/comedy/dante/paradise.xml/3.33


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## starthrower

I have his Wing On Wing CD. The music is pretty flashy, but it doesn't feel like there's a lot of depth to it.


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## Blancrocher

Pentatonic Étude (2008)

Program Note:



> I wrote a short solo viola piece, Pentatonic Étude, in 2008 (revised in 2014) at the request of a musician who suggested I compose an étude based on some well-known passage from the repertoire, a common practice in the past. I was intrigued by the idea: how to imagine a piece of music that circles around an objet trouvé, less as a process of variation, more as unveiling an object that was always there, but hidden. I decided to use mostly traditional viola techniques, but push them to the extreme, keeping in mind the Oxford Dictionary of English definition of the word étude: a short musical composition, typically for one instrument, designed as an exercise to improve the technique or demonstrate the skill of the player.
> 
> I chose the famous black-key pentatonic passage from the first movement of Bartok's Viola Concerto. Despite its obvious ear-worm qualities it is challenging technically, so I decided to write a piece that travels from the "negative" of the matrix of five black keys, i.e. from the five white keys C,D,F,G,A to the black keys Db,Eb,Gb,Ab,Bb through gradual transformation of the chord. In fact this journey takes place twice in the piece: white→ black → white → black.
> At the end of the Étude, after a long arpeggio passage, the beautiful Bartok phrase is revealed in its original form.


A quite attractive work for solo viola


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## Janspe

Listening to Salonen's _Nyx_ for orchestra and enjoying it quite a bit. I've heard his violin concerto (Leila Josefowicz breaths _fire_ to the score!) a few times and it's a work I truly admire - so I'm really interested in exploring his work a bit more. I wasn't too impressed by his piano concerto, it felt a bit rambling and aimless at times, but maybe it would grow on me if I gave it more time... Any thoughts?


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## lextune

Wow....I didn't even know he composed. I love him as a conductor, (best Le Grand Macabre I know of). 

Now I am very much looking forward to hearing his works.


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