The orchestral work Midnight Sun Variations by the young Finnish composer Outi Tarkiainen will be performed for the first time in Germany and Austria over the next two weeks. On November 16, Hagen Theatre will give the German premiere under the baton of Joseph Trafton. This performance will introduce Hagen’s audience to the sound world of Tarkiainen for the upcoming world premiere of the commissioned opera for Theater Hagen A Room of One's Own on May 14, 2022. This will be Tarkiainen’s first opera, and the libretto is written by Francis Hüsers using the essay of the same name by Virginia Woolf.
The Austrian premiere of Midnight Sun Variations will take place on November 27 with the Tonkünstler Orchestra under John Storgårds at the Musikverein Vienna.
Midnight Sun Variations is about the light in the arctic summer night, when the northern sky above the Arctic Circle reflects a rich spectrum of infinitely-nuanced hues that, as autumn draws near, are once again veiled in darkness; when Europe’s biggest and most unpolluted wildernesses, the tundra and dense coniferous forests mystified by Jean Sibelius in his last large-scale work, Tapiola (1926), are bathed in countless shades of light.
