Epifania

Meriläinen
Strait branch
Tiensuu
A flood
Wash
Epiphany
Central Ostrobothnia Chamber Orchestra
Juha Kangas, conductor
The most audible music of our time
The Keski-Ostrobothnia Chamber Orchestra's great new album Epifania* contains works by five composers of our time. No less than four of the works are now playing as world premiere recordings.
The album features:
- Sulci, composed by Jukka Tiensuu (b. 1948) for the Central Ostrobothnia Chamber Orchestra from 2011, which, in Jouni Kaipainen's words, is "stimulating and joyful to hear, possibly even exceptionally vivid without being predictable or self-evident".
- Erkki Salmenhaara's (1941-2002) string orchestra version Canzonetta (1971) of the two-part organ piece Canzona he composed. The string orchestra of the 1972 summer seminar of Savonlinna music premiered the Canzonetta under the direction of the composer, in what he says was the first concert of his "short-lived conducting career".
- Helena Tulve's (b. 1972) piece L'ombre derrière toi (Shadow behind you) commissioned by the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra in 2011. It premiered in January 2012 in Tallinn, conducted by Juha Kankaa. The instrumental arrangement includes three more or less soloist viola da gambas and a string orchestra. Tulve belongs to the strong middle generation of Estonian composers, one of its most famous representatives.
- Epifania (2010), a work dedicated to "my friend Juha Kankaa" by Pēteris Vasks (b. 1946). The composer says that he got the idea for its main theme during a summer evening walk by the Baltic Sea.
- The Summer Concert Geasseija niehku, created in 1994 by the commission of the Central Ostrobothnia Chamber Orchestra by Usko Meriläinen (1930-2004). Meriläinen wrote: "...I admit that as a starting point it was necessary to write music that was immediate, maybe a little dim, but happy". And: "This is not a description of nature. As always before, the work is a movement of thought; now, however, in an environment where the rustic and old-fashioned are allowed to be almost real." The work was completed in Lapland, Enontekiö Heta.
* The Greek word Epiphania means in common language, e.g. emergence, in this case "even the big bang". The album is not markedly religious and the meaning of the name is not very obvious in Vasks's work either, although in the Christian tradition "Epiphany" means the coming of God into the world. The feast of Epiphany ends the Christmas season, in the East as the feast of Christ's baptism (the visible beginning of activity) and in the West as the end of the Nativity, Epiphany, in the Mediterranean countries especially as the feast of the wise men of the East.