Month: April 2017

     Elzbieta Chojnacka

One of the best-known and most-admired composers today, Kaija Saariaho, like all women composers of her day (the ’70s), faced an uphill slog to earn recognition for her work. Discouraged by sexism and alienated by the then doctrinaire 12-tone method forced upon students in her native Helsinki, she heard a new direction in 1980 at Darmstadt when she attended a concert of music of the French spectralists Gerard Grisey and Tristan Murail. She moved to Paris and studied with them at IRCAM, the underground sound lab in the Pompidou Center which was (and is) a center for the exploration of acoustic/electronic interplay. She met Jean-Baptiste Barriere, an electronic music pioneer and her husband of three-plus decades, there as well. This mixtape focuses on Saariaho’s early (1980s) compositions, when she worked at IRCAM, along with great works by Grisey, Murail and Barriere. There is no narration beyond the introduction: this is a straight mixtape. (Cover: Alvar Gullichsen’s “So Far.”)

:00
Concentration Camp Theme
__________
:51
Saariaho: Verblendungen (1982/1984)
Jukka-Pekka Saraste: Avanti ! Chamber Orchestra
    from Kaija Saariaho – Verblendungen – Lichtbogen – Io – Stilleben
  (Finlandia, 1989)
__________
14:00
Spoken
Music of Paavo Heinenen
__________|
21:06
Gérard Grisey: Partiels For 18 Musicians (1975)
Stefan Asbury: Asko Ensemble
    from Gérard Grisey ‎– Les Espaces Acoustiques (Kairos, 2005)
__________
42:59
Tristan Murail: Désintégrations (1982-83)
Tristan Murail w/ Orchestra National de France
    from Murail: Gondwana / Desintegrations / Time & Again (Naive, 2004)
__________
1:05:35
Saariaho: Lichtbogen, for 9 musicians and live electronics (1985/1986)
John Whitfield: Endymion Ensemble
    from Endymion Ensemble: Works By Lindberg, Kaipainen, Hameenniemi &        Saariaho (Finlandia, 1989)
__________
1:24:51
Jean-Baptiste Barrière: La Chute
Jean Baptiste Barriere – Pandémonium: Non, Jamais L’Espérance
    (Atem, 1979)
__________
1:34:52
Saariaho: Io for orchestra, tape and live electronics (1986/1987)
Jukka-Pekka Saraste: Avanti ! Chamber Orchestra
    from Kaija Saariaho – Verblendungen – Lichtbogen – Io – Stilleben

__________
1:52:02
Saariaho: Im Traume, for cello, piano and electronics (1980/1988)
Anssi Karttunen (cello) and Tuija Hakkila (piano)
    from a live performance/Youtube
__________
2:01:08
Pandémonium Featuring Jean-Baptiste
Barriere – “Situations Extremes”
     from Jean Baptiste Barriere – Pandémonium: Non, Jamais L’Espérance
    (Atem, 1979)
__________
2:11:36
Saariaho: Nymphea
Meta4
    from Saariaho: Chamber Music for Strings, Vol. 1 (Ondine, 2013)