Requiem

Tero Linjama
Kostiainen's Requiem is an overlooked landmark case.
The church in Taulumäki was heard on Wednesday evening, October 29. A long and eagerly awaited work in Jyväskylä's music scene, Pekka Kostiainen's Requiem. Flavors of the piece were already heard at a Jyväskylä Sinfonia concert. World premieres of major works of concert music like Sielunmessu are rare on a world scale, let alone in small Finland and its small town. When this is combined with the work's composer, Pekka Kostiainen from Jyväskylä, it can be said that the history of Finnish music was made that night in an impressive way.
Kostiainen's Triduum Paschale, an Easter oratorio, has been performed many times by the Jyväskylä Sinfonia. All performances were sold out and the work was absolutely impressive.
Patrick Gallois raised the piece to be performed again and again. The world man recognized really impressive and good music. We hope that he will take Kostiainen's music to the world in his current duties. However, on Wednesday, in the performance of the Requiem, something deafeningly wonderful was heard, which leaves even the wonderful Triduum behind. Kostiainen has an amazing skill to make genuinely and really uncomplicated and listenable music, full of surprising timbres and memorable themes.
The tones and timbre of the choir are a trademark of his productions and always wonderful to hear. Even now. It goes without saying that this work from Kostiainen's extensive composition production will live for a long time. But what will the historian of the future find at the premiere of the masterpiece. He finds 31.10. 2014 provincial newspaper and reads a two-page small print from there. Instead, he reads a half-page story with large pictures about the soloist of the concert, whom the researcher of the future has never heard of.
I wasn't there to witness Wednesday night myself, but I sat on the hard pew of the Taulumäki church already on Tuesday, listening to the general exercises. However, I know that after the concert, the composer Kostiainen from Jyväskylä got the praise and thanks he deserved. The same cannot really be said about a newspaper.
Of course, I understand that mistakes happen in the editing, but ignoring the masterpiece and focusing on something completely irrelevant when considering the value of the concert was, frankly, the nobility of the scumbags. Kostiainen's Requiem belongs to the nobility of church music, along with Gaubriel Fauré's Requiem. It will get its place and it deserves it.
Kare Eskola
Requiem as a form of composition often draws out new features from composers, especially beauty, drama and tradition awareness. This has also happened to Pekka Kostiainen, whose Requiem is in a way beautiful, sometimes dramatic and fully aware of tradition. But Alba's newly released recording makes the relationship between tradition and the demands of our time's music go sour. Kostiainen's Requiem sounds like all previous requiems, but not new at all.

In itself, it is great that among contemporary Finnish composers there is still the craftsmanship to compose believably in old styles. When the melodies meander without edge, when the strings become really soft or when the pathos drums support the festive brass, it reminds me that Fauré and Verdi already did this. But then Kostiainen throws in a timbre, harmony or stylistic feature that for a moment breaks the illusion of tradition - and feels awkward at the same time. To my ears, Kostiainen's stylistic errors are anachronisms. It seems that the work itself does not know in which time and style it was composed. This feeling is not removed even by the composer's apparent sincerity in seeking emotional effects.
Usually I have no problem accepting tonal and beautiful contemporary music, but Kostiainen's Requiem is an exception, probably because it draws from the past without taking any stance on it. It's not new-nothing or post-nothing. In contrast to, for example, recent recordings of Valentin Silvestrov's music, the dullness confused by anachronism is not saved even by a tense performance.
The Jyväskylä Sinfonia, complemented by the Mikkeli City Orchestra, is a soft enough ensemble for Kostiainen's Requiem, although there is occasional tenderness in the brass. The quartet of soloists has been carefully chosen, and is even capable of decent quartet singing. Suvi Väyrynen's sure and clean soprano shines especially beautifully, but in this context there could be more richness. On the other hand, Simo Mäkinen's cutting, slightly broken Kajahdus still needs polishing. Kostiainen's own Musica choir also sings well and precisely, which is necessary because Kostiainen weaves the lines of the orchestra, choir and soloists together very organically. The unity is supported by the pleasantly church-like sounding, which, especially as a multi-channel, is spacious. It's a shame that the stereo track has slipped into digital distortion at least at one point during the production process.