Outi Tarkiainen and Joel Järventausta win the Classical categories at the MPA* Finland Awards 2025.
Outi Tarkiainen wins in the category Classical Composer of the Year - Large Scale Works, for her orchestral work The Rapids of Life and Joel Järventausta wins in the category Classical Composer of the Year - Small Scale Works, the for his pocket concerto for violin and chamber orchestra, Songs, Games & Dances.
Songs, Games & Dances was written for Niklas Walentin and the Danish Chamber Players (Ensemble Storstrøm) as part of Järventausta's residency as Festival Composer at I Djurs og Mols in 2024. In it, Järventausta explores different moods, from serious, melancholic and anxious, to more euphoric and playful.
The work is part of a Nordic project of 7 Pocket Concertos from 7 different Nordic countries, that will soon be released as an album.
Jointly commissioned by Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC Radio 3, Göteborg Symphony Orchestra, Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra and San Francisco Symphony, Tarkiainen's The Rapids of Life is a work about the act of giving birth.
The Rapids of Life is a work about that paramount moment, about a female’s instinctive birth-giving and a little child of nature who opens his eyes for the first time. The form of the work imitates the physiological delivery and its different stages, carried along by the ever-shifting waves.
(Outi Tarkiainen)
*Music Publisher Association
