Spells

Tapio Tuomela
Spells
Helsinki Chamber Choir
led by Eric-Olof Söderström
conducted by Nils Schweckendiek
led by Hannu Norjanen
Tapio Tuomela's central choral production
On the new album Loitsut, you can hear most of the choral music production of Tapio Tuomela, one of our most significant "not quite younger middle generation" contemporary composers. The works selected for the album are: Liekut ja loitsut (2000), Nelje Puuhaara-laulua (2008), Papiermusik (1990/2008), Rondo (1997), Suomenkielinen vokaliisi (1993) and Kipuloitsu (2006). The performer is the Helsinki Chamber Choir (former Radion Chamber Choir) under the direction of Eric-Olof Söderström, Nils Schweckendiek and Hannu Norjanen. Almost all the works on the album are based on folklore texts. In addition to the choir, Kaisa Tuppurainen, percussion and Heikki Nikula, clarinet & bass clarinet, Saara Rautio, harp in Puuhaara songs, and the composer himself plays a sampler in Finnish vocals.
Liekut ja loitsut was composed in 2000 for the French band Musicatreize, the following year, the Radion Kamarkuoro's performance recorded at the Musica Nova festival has twice the number of singers. A dozen of Kantelettare's poem fragments have been used in the text, the first and last of which describe the sad moods of a wife who has been disappointed in her part; between them, verses of harvest, love picking and drinking songs are heard at an accelerating tempo. Antti Puuhaara is a melodrama that was created in 2007-2008, also commissioned by Musicatreize. The scenes of the Puuhaara song series are
1. Babysit Tuonelahan
2. Found in a tree branch
3. The forest knows
4. Spell
The text of Papiermusik consists of isolated phonemes and the deconstruction of the following German sentences: "Am Anfang war der Klang", (in the beginning there was a sound) "vom Anfang an war schon das Wort" (from the beginning there was a word).
The text of the Rondo, commissioned by the Radio Chamber Choir in 1996, is adapted from the 23rd chapter of the Kalevala, where the bride is prepared for the wedding. Of the album's vocal textures, the last two are in a way the most instrumental: the oldest of the works, Suomenkielinen vokaliisi, and on the other hand Kipuloitsu, which belongs to the newest. As is well known, vowels usually have no words; in this case, the words are actually used only in their rhythmic dimension, in which case the meaning contents are secondary or accidental. In Kipulotsi, on the other hand, the person suffering from the disease bemoans his pain and wishes for the most terrible fate for Kivuttare, whom he thinks is the cause of all diseases. Incantations found in the Old Runes of the Finnish Folk, intended to ward off disease, are combined very freely in the work.

Tapio Tuomela (b. 1958) has a special interest in folklore, and he uses Finnish traditional texts in most of his lyrics, including in his opera Mothers and Daughters commissioned by the Finnish National Opera, which was nominated for the Nordic Music Prize in 2006. He has received competition awards, e.g. In the composition competition for the 70th and 75th anniversary of Finland's independence and in the Sibelius Academy's 100th anniversary composition competition. Two of his works have been placed among the works selected by the jury in the UNESCO Rostrum. In 2005, Tuomela received the recognition award of the Kalevala Society for his works that present Kalevala folk poetry in a modern way.