Transit (2013)
(Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra)

Anyone setting out to compose a guitar concerto faces two very special challenges. First, the composer of classical music is not often familiar with the techniques of playing the instrument, in the way that he or she may be with the piano or the basic instruments of a symphony orchestra. Second, the guitar easily gets drowned by the orchestra.

“I seldom work with an instrument whose idiomatic technique is so unfamiliar,” says Fagerlund. “But I didn’t want to let myself get bogged down in my preconceptions of what is idiomatic for the guitar. Ismo Eskelinen told me to let my imagination freely roam, and he would decide whether what I wrote was playable. I was surprised how many ways some things can be done on a guitar. And it was interesting that in composing for the guitar, I had to dig deeper than usual in my expression; to consider how the material I used would lend itself to the guitar.

“Making room for the soloist is quite a job in a guitar concerto. Though the music is quieter than is usual in my works, this doesn’t mean it can’t be intensive. What interests me is the way the guitar is an organic part of the whole; I didn’t want too much of a contrast between the soloist and the orchestra.”

There is no profound reason for the title, Transit. “Transit” means “passing through” and for Fagerlund the way his material returns and transforms in the course of the concerto, like a spiral. He says it has three main elements: 1) a descending line, manifest in both falling motifs and compacting harmonies, 2) arpeggio-like material that sits naturally on the guitar and that may also be assigned to other instruments, and 3) a rhythmically strong, syncopated motif.

The concerto is in six parts or movements joined without a break and tracing a broad and varied arch. The descending line providing a frame for the work as a whole makes its appearance in the opening bars. At first, the music is delicately transparent and almost pointillist, but the events grow denser as the movement proceeds. From time to time the guitar engages in close dialogue with the orchestra. The second movement has an expectant air to it and allows the soloist to improvise a short cadenza against long background string notes. The falling motif appears in the third part in a greatly drawn-out version on the strings. The mood grows tenser and leads the orchestra to a powerful climax. The rhythmic element is most striking and accented in the fourth movement, in which the guitar also uses percussive effects. The momentum continues in the fifth, but is less rhythmic and determined. Finally the concerto adopts a meditative mode, and not until the end does the guitar reveal its true character, as the descending line and the arpeggio material blend as one; as it crystallises, the music grows ethereal and fades away.

Kimmo Korhonen, translated by Susan Sinisalo