Essential Saariaho
To experience Kaija Saariaho's music is to step into strange, magical world in which the senses of taste and sight merge into that of hearing. Her music thrives on the intangible as much as it strives for beauty.
Read more…Saariaho's works are highly distinctive, but they are also clearly linked to the impressionistic landscapes of Claude Debussy, to the nature music of Finnish composers including Sibelius, and to the principles of the 1980s European avant-garde. Saariaho was raised in Helsinki, the world's second northernmost capital and a city in which sunlight can be in short supply. Her music often treats light as a commodity to be cherished, and views translucence as an aspiration. After she moved to Paris in 1982 (where she lived until her death on June 2nd, 2023), Saariaho gained a new perspective on Nordic light and nature while her embracing of electronics infinitely expanded the ways in which her view of those elements could be captured in music. Saariaho has written works in every genre including opera, but her mining of new colours and textures from within the orchestra – particularly when electronics are woven in – is her most striking achievement.