Songs from the North
Vancouver composer part of Scandinavian program by Cantata Singers
As this year’s classical music season winds to an end, many groups aim to go out with a bang. For the Vancouver Cantata Singers, the grand finale is an innovative program, Scandinavian Treasures: Songs of the North, by composers from Iceland to Finland. Artistic director Paula Kremer notes that it’s sung in five languages and includes a world premiere by her Vancouver Community College colleague Alan Matheson.
A jazz performer and popular lecturer about the history of jazz as well as a composer, Matheson has strong personal links with the northern lands. He told me: “When Paula asked me to compose something for the Scandinavian concert, my first thought was to ask my wife Riina to write a text in Finnish that I could work with. Riina had written the texts for our 2009 piece Three Estonian Songs, which the Cantata Singers performed in 2010. Riina wrote the texts for Metsa (Woods) and Vuodenajat (Seasons) in Estonian, then translated them into Finnish. Our Finnish friend Anna-Maija Nibbelink did the final edit.
“Setting Finnish words to music is a fun challenge,” says Matheson. “Since Riina and I have spent practically every summer since 2008 in Finland, it wasn’t difficult to get inside the words and their imagery, then come up with a musical response to complement them. Riina and I are very happy to pay tribute to a place that’s very dear to us.”
Kremer made her own first visit to Scandinavia last summer. With this year’s project in mind, she explored the homelands of many of her favourite choral composers, including visits to the homes of Edvard Grieg and Jean Sibelius. Her program of Scandinavian Treasures re-creates her journey, starting with Icelandic, Norwegian, and Danish music in the first half, then moving on to Swedish and Finnish music in the second.
The program is a blend of new repertoire with regional favourites, pieces known and loved by choral singers from each tradition. Big names such as Grieg and Sibelius join a generous sampler of 20th- and 21st-century composers representing the astonishing flourishing of music in the north. The program is in a new, entirely appropriate venue for the choir: Burnaby’s Scandinavian Cultural Centre, nestled between Burnaby Lake and Deer Lake.
Music from Scandinavia and the Baltic countries seems to be more and more popular. Why, I asked Matheson, have so many of us just begun to discover northern composers, and what makes this music so intriguing for a growing constituency of listeners? His answer: “It’s due, in part, to the advocacy of conductors like Esa-Pekka Salonen, the work of choirs like the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir (especially under their director Tonu Kaljuste), and the ongoing success of Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho. More and more listeners are being exposed to more and more excellent music from Scandinavia and the Baltic region.”
For Kremer, the appeal is also tied to a sense of place. “Scandinavian choral music is so immersed in its landscape. Beautiful texts describing one’s physical surroundings in nature — mountains, sunsets, forests, and water — you can almost feel the cold in some of the works from Iceland, or smell the blossoms of midsummer in others. Add to this a heritage of imagination — of mythology and folklore — throw in a hambo (a traditional Swedish dance) and even some ABBA. What’s not to like?”