Tag des Jahrs was conceived after a close friend suffered a cerebral haemorrhage, leading to a new insight into Friedrich Hölderlin's poems about time and memory.
Composer's Artistic Vision
Saariaho often arranges and assembles texts herself for her choral works, with the exception of pieces created with librettist Aleksi Barrière.
Compositional Technique
In Tag des Jahrs, Kaija Saariaho expanded the sound world beyond human voices to include nature sounds like birds and wind, reflecting the presence of nature in the poems.
Composer's Artistic Vision
Kaija Saariaho, the composer, has always been inclined to write for choir and the human voice, finding that choral works allow for manifold uses of text.
Composition History
Horloge, tais-toi! was inspired by Kaija Saariaho's daughter singing in a choir, and the text was written by her then 15-year-old son, Aleksi Barrière.
Compositional Technique
In Nuits, adieux, Kaija Saariaho uses two microphones per singer: one for general amplification and processing, and a second for reverberation controlled by vocal dynamics, creating a continuously changing background texture.
Album & Artwork
The title piece, Reconnaissance, combines the English meaning of military exploration with the French meaning of rediscovering what is already known, inspired by images of Mars and 15th-century Franco-Flemish madrigals.
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