Kaija Saariaho's music will be filling the walls of Berwaldhallen at this year's Baltic Sea Festival (Östersjöfestivalen) in three fabulous concerts, with three spectacular orchestras and choirs in Stockholm, Sweden.

This year's festival is inspired by visionaries who lead the world in new directions and who make us look up and see new solutions, to dare to dream and help us believe that a better world is possible.

Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra & Esa-Pekka Salonen

On August 26, 2024, under the direction of Esa-Pekka Salonen, The Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra celebrates visions and visionaries with an explosive concert.

Kaija Saariaho's Lumière et Pesanteur is on the program. The work was a gift for Esa-Pekka Salonen and was inspired by his performance of La Passion de Simone in Los Angeles in January 2009.

La Passion de Simone is Saariaho's grand oratorio which explores the life and writings of the Jewish French philosopher and social activist Simone Weil. Lumière et Pesanteur is based on the eighth part of the oratorio, Dieu se retire pour ne pas être aimé comme un trésor par un avare.

Tallinn Chamber Orchestra

On August 29, 2024, Tallinn Chamber Orchestra and Tõnu Kaljuste present a concert about memory and melancholy.

Perfect for this concert is Saariaho's Terra Memoria, a work about remembering the people who are no longer with us. And a perfect way to remember Saariaho, a little more than a year after she left us.

Those of us who are left behind are constantly reminded of our experiences together: our feelings continue to change about different aspects of their personality, certain memories keep on haunting us in our dreams. Even after many years, some of these memories change, some remain clear flashes which we can relive.

These thoughts brought me to treat the musical material in a certain manner; some aspects of it go through several distinctive transformations, whereas some remain nearly unchanged, clearly recognizable.
- Kaija Saariaho

A Night of Dreams

On August 30, 2024, The Swedish Radio Choir invties us to the realm of dreams in a vertiginous concert.

About the bittersweet paradox of having to wake up and bid farewell to the night and dreams, Saariaho's Nuits, adieux fits the program perfectly.

The piece consists of ten passages, five Nuit (night) and five Adieu (farewell).
Two different text sources for each: Jacques Roubaud's book Echanges de la lumière for Nuit and Honoré de Balzac's novel Séraphita for Adieu.

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