HIGH NOTES
Cultural melting pot
V.R. DEVIKA
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The premiere of Eero Hämeenniemi’s “Rain and Red Earth”, at the recent Helsinki Festival, was an amazing experience.
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Photo: Maarit Kytöharju
Confluence of cultures: Eero Hämeenniemi and the artistes in Huvilla.
It rained music at the Helsinki festival…
“In a tent!” exclaimed Bombay Jayashri. “Yes but a tent that looks like the Sydney Opera House,” replied Eero Hämeenniemi, the Finnish composer, when he spoke to her in Chennai about this concert.
Huvilla, the tent at the Helsinki festival, did look like the Sydney Opera house. Large blue and pink fabric as backdrop interestingly arranged with tiny light bulbs flickering like so many stars.
We were a few minutes late. My hosts TV journalist Tiina Maiija Lehtonen and her journalist trade unionist husband Erki Kupari wanted to stop by at a painting show first. Bombay Jayashri was already singing Mokshamu Galada as we entered… the hall was almost full.
The mostly Finnish audience with a handful of Indian faces (not more than ten) was fully engrossed. When she began the Raagam-Taanam-Pallavi the audience sat straight and watched her with intensity; Lalgudi Jayaraman’s Tillanna in Behag had them tapping their legs to the rhythm.
Careful preparation
Post-interval was the main event: the premiere of Eero Hämeenniemi’s new composition “Rain and Red Earth”; five songs from the Tamil classic Kuruntoghai. This saw Jayashri collaborating with the Avanti Chamber orchestra conducted by John Storgards and led by Minna Pensola and Heikki Nikula on the violin and bass clarinet.
“This composition is the result of two decades of careful preparation” says Hämeenniemi. “With this I realise two dreams: to write songs for my favourite Carnatic musician Bombay Jayashri and the other to make a large and substantial work based on the poems from Kuruntoghai.” The poems were sung in Tamil but Hämeenniemi’s Finnish translations were available for the audience.
As the orchestra began playing, Jayashri picked up the notes and sang Mazhai mazhai vilayadum mazhai (rain, rain, playful rain). Rain beat on the roof of the tent and water drops fell off the gable by the side of performing stage catching the light as they fell.
Minna Pensola’s violin followed Jayashri’s voice like a shadow and brought out all the love and pathos of the poem and the music.
“I see music as interaction and dialogue. I write as a practical musician, and my ideas are ultimately based on three decades of experience as a practicing composer, performer and listener,” said Hämeenniemi later.
“It is a defining moment for me as a musician,” said Bombay Jayashri. “During the rehearsals, the first two days were a challenge for me to understand the conductor’s language. Minna Pensola is a great violinist. She really inspired me.”
Adventurous programme
Eero Hämeenniemi knew he had to go Avanti Chamber Orchestra to produce this. Avanti is a premier chamber orchestra of Helsinki founded by two world class conductors. The orchestra does not employ musicians on its rolls as is the practice elsewhere but seeks and gives short-term contracts to musicians on its panel for a particular concert.
“Avanti is well known for its adventurous programmes in music and had a bold artistic vision in its current director Kari Kriikku. In the four days of rehearsal, they were pushed to the limits and not one musician complained,” says Hämeenniemi.
Eero Hämeenniemi has been coming to India for more than three decades every year. How did India happen? I ask as he takes me round the old quarters of Finland. “In our school text book, we had an open letter to the world’s youth by the great German music composer Karlheinz Stockhousen whom I greatly admired. I was 16 and I wrote to him.”
Stockhousen, then in Japan, wrote back asking the young man to read The Life Divine by Sri Aurobindo. Hämeenniemi found the book only in the Helsinki open distance library. He had to read it in three weeks. He asked his mother if she would let him miss school to finish the book. She agreed and he read the book in the time given.
“I understood very little at the time but it made me want to go to India.” He made it to India in his early thirties and has been visiting every year since. “I first went to North India but found that I was attending more South Indian concerts there. So I decided to go to Madras in 1991. Chennai is now a second home to me.”
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