Sunday (12/16) on South Florida Classical Review, David Fleshler writes, “The musical bounty of contemporary Finland took the stage Saturday in Miami Beach, as conductor Susanna Mälkki led a performance by the New World Symphony that was both exhilarating and thought-provoking. … The concert opened with the Clarinet Concerto by the Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho, given its premiere in Helsinki in 2010 and inspired by a famous, cryptic series of medieval tapestries called The Lady and the Unicorn. ‘I started to imagine the clarinet as a unicorn,’ the composer explained, in a video projected above the stage before the performance. ‘I started to ask myself what kind of sounds would a unicorn make?’ A unicorn, apparently, would make the sounds of a clarinet stretching its technique to the outer limits, with high notes beyond anything normally heard from the instrument, including multiphonics—the production of two or more simultaneous tones—weird growls and shrieking glissandos. The Finnish clarinetist Kari Kriikku, for whom the work was composed, handled all this expertly while moving around the hall in a way that threw out the traditional concerto performance style in which the soloist remains planted in front of the orchestra. … Mälkki drew a subtle, richly colored performance from the New World musicians, keeping pace with the soloist’s improvisatory wanderings.”
Posted December 18, 2012
