jwilzewske: Long-lost Sampo Found: Mikko Luoma, Jukka Tiensuu, and Finnish Identity

My mother’s people were Finnish-Swedish and came from Kokkola (Karleby; coastal Finland, south of Oulu) and the Aland islands (Åland in Swedish, Ahvenanmaa in Finnish; located between eastern Sweden and southwestern Finland, about 100 km across the Baltic from Stockholm). Åland and Kokkola were once isolated and connected only by sea. In some ways, they are even today isolated—not socially, but in terms of cultural identity.

Which is not to say that identity is hobbled or deficient in any way. To the contrary, these are among the few places left with unalloyed identities—where authentic folk culture continues to resist the pervasive consumeristic, globalized mass culture. Finnish chamber music contributes to that resistance—including the work of Mikko Luoma, virtuoso accordionist. His CD, released last year by Bridge Records, is a breathtakingly-performed, beautifully-produced, expertly-engineered immersion in the Finnish ethos.

Mikko Luoma

Power – Haapamäki
Aufschwung – Tiensuu
Carpathian Suite – Zubitsky
Vagabonde blu – Sciarrino
Passacaille – Grisey
Jeux d’anches – Lindberg
Zolo – Tiensuu

The ‘orality’ of Luoma’s playing is astonishing. His entry into the music is that of a consummate actor or storyteller. He imparts an immediacy, an in-the-moment ‘happeningness’, to every piece. The effect on us listeners is riveting—resembling very much the aura of a belovèd grandparent confabulating stories for us at bedtime when we were small children.

T he whole work is a joy, precisely because one can hear two things concurrently: the vibrant nature of the generating folklore and [the] delighted exploration thereof.”
— Colin Clarke, Fanfare.

The playing feels at times autobiographical, so deeply invested is Luoma in the performance. Here is a virtuosic, classically-trained musician evoking the mind of an aboriginal keeper of folk myths! His neo-mythologizing transgresses the cultural borders at the same time as their Finnishness is reinforced. The CD is, inadvertently, an acoustic monograph on mythification in compositional processes and performance practice.

Aufschwung (‘upswing’; up-beat) composed by Jukka Tiensuu in 1977 is a seminal milestone in the development of classical Finnish accordion music—more than maybe any other piece. It is architectonic acoustic art, in some ways closer to electroacoustic idioms than to accordion ‘orchestral’ writing.

[50-sec clip, Jukka Tiensuu, ‘Aufschwung’, Mikko Luoma, 2.2MB MP3]

Zolo, the other Tiensuu composition on this CD, is also atmospheric—experimental, oracular, filled with grunts and growls, and performed with a lyricism that belies the piece’s virtuosic difficulty. To hear and appreciate the physics of these masterful impersonations—of orchestral instruments, of animals, of spirits and mythical beings—is alone worth the price of this CD. Luoma makes the accordion do things that seem quite impossible. The musicality and the apparent ease with which he achieves his lyrical results are enthralling. If you have any affinity for classical accordion at all, you must get this CD.

[50-sec clip, Jukka Tiensuu, ‘Zolo’, Mikko Luoma, 2.2MB MP3]

Physics of free-reed, Fletcher, Fig 13.7

jwilzewske

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Long-lost Sampo Found: Mikko Luoma, Jukka Tiensuu, and Finnish Identity

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