Kaija Saariaho passed away this Friday morning at his home in Paris, at the age of 70. The Finnish composer, one of the most extraordinary voices of contemporary creation, an artist of deep emotions, had suffered for a couple of years from glioblastoma, an aggressive, incurable and lethal brain cancer, according to her family in a statement issued throught social media.
With her goes a great one, one of the most important of the early 21st century worldwide, honored in Spain with the 2017 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Contemporary Music Award. She was the author of a hundred works, including five operas, eight concerts and experimental electroacoustic music, although chamber pieces abound in his catalogue. Her international debut was the opera L'amour de loin, premiered in 2000, with a libretto by the Egyptian writer Amin Maalouf. Among her best-known works are the instrumental music piece Verblendungen (1984) and the electronic Lichtbogen (1986).
Saariaho developed an affinity for opera and choral music, works of greater force and larger structures. From his famous Other Sea, commissioned by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, to the exciting Only the Sound Remains, co-commissioned by the Teatro Real: an opera with stories from Japanese Noh theater, staged by Peter Sellars.
"They were simple but profound stories about resignation, loss and our relationship with the supernatural and the spiritual," says Joan Matabosch, artistic director of the institution. "Saariaho's music disarms, seduces, hypnotizes, invites to a contemplative experience. Music and theater have in it something of a sacred ritual. To which contributes the timbre refinement, the subtle instrumentation, the inner tension and the sweet and melancholic writing for the voices," he adds.
Víctor García de Gomar, artistic director of the Liceu, recalls that his legacy remains linked to a creation capable of immersing us in the deepest emotions of the human being. "A universal composer, she is an essential link in the tradition of her country, Finland, while she has explored the new limits of composition with technology." From her extraordinary catalog of operas, I would highlight L'Amour de loin, "an immense sound Everest, an artifact of our ability to love."
Born in Helsinki, in 1952, as Kaija Laakkonen, she was the daughter of a metal worker and completed her composition studies at the Sibelius Academy in 1976. The genius composer, "synthesis of many things and at the same time with her own language", in In the words of the general director of the Palau de la Música Catalana, Joan Oller, Saariaho later trained in Freiburg (Germany) and Paris, where he lived since 1982. From Finnish avant-garde circles he made the leap to Europe to contribute to the golden age of electronic music.
His studies at IRCAM influenced his music and the mysterious textures that result from the combination of live music with electronic productions. And later he integrated harmony and psychoacoustics into the tradition of modern orchestration and opera in a novel way, achieving recognition from critics and audiences alike. In a 2019 BBC survey of 174 composers, Saariaho was chosen as the greatest living composer, based on criteria of originality, impact and enjoyment of her music.
Although she leaves at a premature age, she had a full existence, point out her husband, the composer and multimedia artist Jean-Baptiste Barrière, and her children, the writer and director Aleksi Barrière and the conductor and violinist Aliisa Neige Barrière. "During the period of illness, she continued to be involved in new productions and premieres of her latest works: the Saarikoski Songs, the chamber work Semafor, the orchestral piece Vista, the madrigal Reconnaissance, the recreation of her first musical theater piece, Study for Life , and his acclaimed last opera, Innocence".
His disease did not affect his faculties until the last stage, when the motor area was compromised with the development of tumors. In recent months, however, she has dedicated herself to completing her trumpet concerto, HUSH, which will be premiered in Helsinki in August 2024 by Verneri Pohjola and with Susanna Mälkki conducting the Finnish Radio Symphony.
