14/09/2025
Today at Espoon kulttuurikeskus, on the occasion of KANTELE DAY 2025, kantele player Eija Kankaanranta and flutist Camilla Hoitenga will perform a selection of music written for them by Kaija Saariaho, plus brand new arrangements of Saariaho works featuring the versatile Finnish zither. Soprano Tuuli Lindeberg and cellist Hans Schröck will also lend their talents to the event.
⛩️ Everything started with ONLY THE SOUND REMAINS, Saariaho's penultimate opera, premiered in 2016 in Amsterdam. For this original reimagining of two Japanese noh plays, Kaija Saariaho combined the artistry of her long-term friend and collaborator Camilla Hoitenga, performing on all four flutes (from bass to piccolo), and the unique craft of Eija Kankaanranta, who guided her into the possibilities of the kantele, an instrument for which she has militantly commissioned a wide repertoire of new music. In addition to being a major contribution to contemporary opera presented on three continents, ONLY THE SOUND REMAINS contains some 100 minutes of kantele music composed by Saariaho for Kankaanranta and her arsenal of differently tuned and sized kanteles, making it one of the single largest and most multifaceted works written for the instrument. Fittingly for an evening celebrating the kantele, Eija and Camilla are revisiting this seminal collaboration by performing an instrumental section of the opera tonight.
🎵 Kaija herself has transcribed and expanded on the material of the opera in LIGHT STILL AND MOVING, a duet for Eija and Camilla premiered in 2017. You can listen to the entire work here (15 min): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LqeSi8Ymu
🎶 Kaija's last work for the kantele was the lullaby SOTKA SOUTI, based on a traditional Finnish poem and composed for her daughter Aliisa's birthday in 2020. You can listen to a performance by Eija Kankaanranta and Tuuli Lindeberg, who will also perform it tonight, over here (4 min, English subtitles available): https://youtu.be/Bl0oQ0ks-s0?si=lXhXrPBTwpN_bEb7&t=1703
