Violin Concerto (2012)
(‘Darkness in Light’)

Sebastian Fagerlund, born in Finland in 1972, is one of the spiritual post-modernist composers who, with their orchestral works, explore the modes of being that are found in the 21st-century world. These composers are receptive ‘earwitnesses’ to modern culture, sculpting our existential experiences into a sounding shape. Fagerlund’s music is characterized by incessantly flowing, layered soundscapes, in which forceful, angular figures and static, brooding motifs trace out strong lines or exist as independent blocks. This results in the impression of inexorable processes, natural or mechanical, indifferent to those who find themselves at the centre of the events.

His compositions are often shaped like journeys into the inner being, in the course of which we encounter unknown forces, Kafkaesque nightmares and austere contemplations, destructive maelstroms and regenerating tissue. His style can be characterized as ‘magic realism’: elements of surreality are combined with factual narrative. Beneath the surface we perceive a continuous feeling of transformation.  

By drawing upon the symphony orchestra’s spectrum of colours and extreme range, his music reflects not only the traditions of impressionism, modernism and post-minimalism but also a good ear for timbre-oriented musical genres, from cool jazz to ambient music. Likewise the composer takes into account the more physical elements of music: the beat and the decibel count. We hear incessant motifs, machine-like rhythmic figures and violent avalanches, which hint at Stravinskian primitivism and musical multiculturalism ranging from heavy metal to big band.

An openness to different musical traditions, musicianly ‘groove’ and an attitude that emphasizes the communality of art unite Fagerlund with Pekka Kuusisto, to whom the Violin Concerto Darkness in Light (2012) is dedicated. Kuusisto’s skill as a violinist and their artistic collaboration fuelled the compositional process.

The concerto begins with pitch-black motion in the orchestra, making use of – for example – the throbbing of the tuba, bass clarinet and timpani. From within this antimatter the solo violin rebounds into a shaft of light cast by the fluttering woodwinds, cymbals and tubular bells. And thus the soloist’s journey into the orchestra’s cosmic purgatory begins.

The violin grapples as if in perpetual motion, and descends into the abyss of micro-intervals. Its triple and quadruple stops are like straight and hooked punches aimed at the beats of the bass drum. It reaches impossible heights by means of harmonics, and bounces off the edge of inaudibility. It tunes in to the ratios of the universe and whistles through glissando trills as if electrified.

The composer has spoken of the soloist’s Don Quixote-like struggle against the orchestra’s different and various-sized machines. The challenge is divided into scenes, punctuated by pings, swishes and ‘exclamation marks’ on one and the same note. The impression is as if the soloist was proceeding from one reality to another parallel one. The journey is an arduous one – but, nevertheless, the violin’s picaresque virtuosity also radiates joy: the irresistible appeal of incomparable mastery.

The first movement culminates in a cadenza in which the soloist has the opportunity to improvise freely, which Kuusisto takes with enthusiasm. The cadenza begins in a meditative setting, somewhat in the manner of a Japanese garden. Then it flails and grinds in ever stranger sounds, as if the bow were an aerial and the violin a radio, picking up wondrous messages from another star.

The second movement is the work’s slow centrepiece, a subconscious entity like Tarkovsky’s Solaris, in which we hear strange scales, the desolation of open-sounding intervals and the sound of mysterious brass flying past. The direction is downward, inward, towards the core. The music falls apart into a very quiet state where all that can be heard is the friction between mind and matter – bare existence.

The third movement returns to earth. The soloist’s abrasive motifs and the orchestral groupings are placed in a broader perspective. The strings’ glissandos and the glockenspiel’s chromaticism wrench up like a film camera moving up and zooming out. The momentum increases, and for a moment the soloist seems to roam through the world’s violin concerto repertoire. The epilogue makes the listener stop and think; it is reduced to the essentials. 

According to the composer, the concerto’s title refers to the subtle narrative style of the Japanese author Haruki Murakami (b.1949), which mixes reality and the surreal. At the same time the name illustrates the music’s way of transcending distinctions. Darkness and light, tonality and atonality, orchestra and soloist, community and individual, destruction and renewal – there cannot be one without the other.

Light and darkness are traditional allegorical representations of life and death. As Murakami’s character says in the novella Firefly (Hotaru; 1983): ‘Death is not the opposite of life, but a part of it.’ Death illuminates life because being reminded of it intensifies the present moment.

Susanna Välimäki (Translation Andrew Barnett)