Kaija Saariaho

• Born: 1952, Helsinki, Finland
  
• Died: June 2, 2023, Paris, France

True Fire for Baritone and Orchestra

• Composed: 2014
  Premiere: True Fire for baritone and orchestra was commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, NDR Sinfonieorchester, BBC Symphony Orchestra and Orchestre national de France. The world premiere took place on May 14, 2015 at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles, performed by Gerald Finley (baritone) with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, Gustavo Dudamel conducting.  
• Instrumentation: solo baritone, 3 flutes (incl. piccolo, alto flute), 2 oboes, 3 clarinets (incl. bass clarinet), 2 bassoons (incl. contrabassoon), 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, crotales, glass chimes, glockenspiel, log drum, marimba, suspended cymbals, tam-tam, tambour de Basque, triangle, unpitched instruments, bowed vibraphone, wood block, wood wind chimes, harp, strings 
• CSO notable performances: These are the first CSO performances of the work.
• Duration: approx. 30 minutes

Kaija Saariaho studied composition in Helsinki, Freiburg and Paris, where she lived from 1982. Her Finnish background and research at the Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music (IRCAM) were major influences on her music, and her characteristically luxuriant and mysterious textures were often created by combining live music and electronics.

With an impressive catalogue of chamber music, often written for friends and professional colleagues, from the mid-90s she turned increasingly to larger forces and broader structures, including the operas L’Amour de loin (2000) and Adriana Mater (2005), the monodrama Emilie (2008), and Only the Sound Remains (2015), which explores Japanese Noh plays in translation by Ezra Pound.

Her latest opera, Innocence (2018), continues to be celebrated around the world. Study for Life (1980), her very first stage work, was eventually premiered in 2022, some 40 years after she wrote it.

Vocal music was always a focal point of her creative space, and Saariaho composed several works in this vein for the concert hall, such as Château de l’âme (1996), Oltra mar (1999), Quatre instants (2002), Leino Songs (2017), Saarikoski Songs (2020), and the oratorio La Passion de Simone (2006–07), as well as True Fire (2014).

Saariaho’s catalogue includes many concerti: L’aile du songe (2001) and Notes on Light (2006) for lifelong friends, the flautist Camilla Hoitenga and cellist Anssi Karttunen; D’Om le Vrai Sens (2010) for clarinetist Kari Krikku; Maan varjot (2013) for organist Olivier Latry; Trans (2015) for harpist Xavier de Maistre; and her last work, HUSH (2023), for Finnish jazz trumpet legend Verneri Pohjola.

Saariaho was a master of orchestration and structure, and her orchestral catalogue provides rich and rewarding music, from the early Du cristal (1989) and Verblendungen (1994) via Orion (2002) and Circle Map (2012) to the most recent work Vista (2019).
The music of Kaija Saariaho is published exclusively by Chester Music and Edition Wilhelm Hansen, part of Wise Music Group.

Saariaho wrote the following about True Fire: 

This piece has been growing in my mind for several years: the music was emerging before I even started looking for the texts. This made finding the right texts difficult. I spent much time going through my favorite writers, but nothing I knew seemed to fit my project. I finally ended up using six texts from different sources, but which seemed to fit into my plan. The texts by Seamus Heaney, Traditional Indians and Mahmoud Darwish are interspersed in three short fragments taken from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Spiritual Laws, a collection included in his Essays.

My preliminary idea was to explore the baritone voice in the context of various texts, finding an organic way to access the different colors of the voice through the texts. It was also important to give Gerald Finley, to whom the piece is written and dedicated, a full range of expression. Even though the general character of the work was in my mind before I had found the suitable texts, it is finally these texts that define the vocal expression of the singer and the details of the musical material.

It is only now after having completed the work that I see the common ideas in these contrasting texts: our being surrounded by nature, our perception of this and our being part of it.

Here, briefly, are some thoughts concerning the six movements:

Proposition I, based on a reflection by Emerson, is a syllabic opening section, calm and contemplating. The orchestral chords are like pillars built on the solo voice.

River, on the text by Seamus Heaney: melismatic singing draws the orchestra into a lively flow, into elastic verticality.

Proposition II is a short statement from Emerson, calm and expressive. This is the heart of the piece.

Lullaby, based on a traditional American Indian song, is a joyous and tender lullaby, not so concerned with getting the child to sleep but rather with having a great moment together and telling a good story!

Farewell forms again a sharp contrast to the happy mood of Lullaby. It is dark and heavy, and the singing line breaks regularly down into slow speech.

Proposition III closes the cycle with a radiant image of us humans as part of the physical nature around us. The sensation of weightless energy elevates us high above the gravity. —Paris, April 14th, 2015, KS