Search - Kaija Saariaho, Dawn Upshaw :: Kaija Saariaho: Prisma; Private Gardens

A brilliant music CD combined with a CD-ROM that's frankly n

Christopher Culver | 07/16/2006

(3 out of 5 stars)

"This Naive release from 1999 pairs PRIVATE GARDENS, a collection of Kaija Saariaho's music previously released on Ondine, along with an educational CD-ROM on the composer's work produced by the Finnish Music Information Center.



PRIVATE GARDENS, the musical disc, contains four works, all played by their dedicatees, which epitomize Saariaho in the early-to-mid 1990s. "Lohn" was written with Dawn Upshaw in mind like many of Saariaho's vocal works, while "Pres" was dedicated to cellist Anssi Karttunen like most of her cello works, and all pieces here use electronics. At this time Saariaho was concerned primarily with timbre, in which exploration the electronics were a great resource. Recent Saariaho has moved away from pure sound and has moved more towards melody, a development I'm still unsure about, but there is no doubt that what Saariaho was doing in this era was exciting.



"Lohn" for soprano and electronics (1996) uses as its text a poem by Jaufre Rudel, the troubadour who also inspired the composer's 2000 opera "L'amour de loin". The soprano's part is relatively traditional with its diatonic scales, but the electronics give the piece its exotic sheen through mainly bell and chime-like sounds. Upshaw's performance, as in the DVD of "L'amour de loin" or the Sony disc with "Graal Theatre", shows her seemingly in perfect concord with the feelings of the composer. "Pres" for cello and electronics (1992) is a solo work in four movements based mainly on the cello part in "Amers", a sort of concerto for cello, orchestra, and electronics which the composer wrote earlier that year. Both pieces expand the possibilities of the cello by using a special microphone developed at IRCAM that can capture each of the cello's four strings in order to amplify or electronically alter their sound separately. This is a piece difficult to describe, consisting of continual crescendos and descents with various cello effects and electronic alterations, but it is truly one of the most awesome sonic experiences I have ever heard, and would have this disc rated five stars in spite of whatever other material is present. Anssi Karttunen again shows himself one of the greatest cellists of modern repertoire.



"NoaNoa" for flute and electronics (1992) was written with the assistance of Camilla Hoitenga, who performs here. The piece takes its title from the Tahitian word for "odour" as was given to an engraving by Paul Gaugin. The "gimmick" of the piece is that as the flautist performs, spoken word heavily treated with electronics is laid on top, and the breathing of the speaker meets the breathing of the flautist. There is another performance of this piece on a BIS disc, but I regrettably haven't heard it yet. Finally, "Six Japanese Gardens" for percussion and electronics (1993-95) was inspired by places Saariaho saw during travels in Japan. Here Saariaho, in a rare turn, limits the timbral possibilities in order to emphasis a development of rhythm, but the result is quite fascinating.



While the music on the first disc is brilliant, the CD-ROM is generally a disappointment. Instead of containing a standard format like HTML that can be viewed in all computers, the makers placed Windows and Macintosh-specific software that was a pain for this Linux user. When I was finally able to view the contents through emulation, I found that it consists mainly of low-quality Quicktime video, the briefest of commentary on her works by Hoitenga, Karttunen, musicologist Ivanka Stoianova, and Saariaho's husband and fellow composer Jean-Baptiste Barriere. What's here is not substantial enough to warrant paying such a high price for the disc, unless you're lucky enough to find it heavily discounted as I was. Would that Naive re-release this as material as a DVD.



If you're a Saariaho completist, you'll probably want to get this no matter what is on it. However, if you have only a passing acquittance with this superb composer, you'd do better to get the original Ondine release of PRIVATE GARDENS first."