Kaija Saariaho

Listening to Kaija Saariaho’s works can feel like taking a mystical voyage into another world. It’s a feeling you get even from her first professional work, the dazzling Verblendungen (1984), and the breakthrough piece that followed, Lichtbogen (1986), inspired by the aurora borealis. Characteristically, both pieces seamlessly meld acoustic instruments with electronics to create ethereal, mysteriously shifting soundscapes. So often in Saariaho’s work you'll hear her synesthetic appreciation of sound—colour is key. Born in 1952 in Helsinki, she is part of a generation of powerhouse Finnish composers (including Esa-Pekka Salonen and Magnus Lindberg) who attended the Sibelius Academy. But her voice is distinctly her own. She initially followed the path of complex serial music before discovering the work of French spectralists Tristan Murail and Gérard Grisey while attending the famous Darmstadt summer course. Saariaho also attended the IRCAM in Paris, where she began an intense exploration of spectral music in which the acoustical properties of sound—or sound spectra—are used as the basis for composition. Her operas, such as the darkly alluring L’Amour de loin (2000), are dramatic and yet luminously textured. Her command of orchestral colour—hear her purely orchestral diptych Du cristal …à la fumée (1990)—is second to none: she creates music that seems to evolve naturally and breathe with a life of its own.