Saarikoski Songs

The cycle sets five poems in Finnish by Pentti Saarikoski, so the words may be unfamiliar. A printed translation, if the orchestra provides one, helps a great deal.

Listen first for the soprano's line, which often moves in long, floating phrases that bend between pitches in a way that sounds close to speech. Saariaho wrote the cycle for the soprano Anu Komsi, who is known for an unusually flexible, clear voice.

The orchestra does not simply accompany. Its sound is delicate and colorful, with small groups of solo winds, high strings and a lot of quiet percussion, so the music shimmers more than it drives forward.

One of the songs speaks of the face of nature, and the music for it is soft and still. Others have a more restless or darker mood, with sharper rhythms in the percussion and low strings.

The songs are fairly short, and the whole cycle ends quietly. It rewards close listening.

Kaija Saariaho, a Finnish composer who died in 2023, began the Saarikoski Songs in 2013 at the suggestion of the soprano Anu Komsi. The first song stood alone at the start, and she added more over several years, finishing the set in 2020. They were first written with piano. The orchestral version was commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig, and was first heard in Boston in early 2022 with Komsi singing. Saarikoski was a leading Finnish poet of the 1960s and 70s, and his poems are known for their plain, searching voice.