Ohessa tänään Amfion.fi -sivulla julkaistu arvioni eilisestä Klang-sarjan avajaiskonsertista Musiikkitalon Camerata-salissa.

http://www.amfion.fi/konsertit/arviot/klang-flow-and-friction/

La Fenicestä

Kävin lauantaina 14.7.2012 Savonlinnan Oopperajuhlilla katsomassa Kimmo Hakolan tilausoopperan, La Fenicen viimeisen esityksen. Olin kokemuksen jälkeen pitkään sanaton, enkä osannut sanoa siitä kenellekään kyselijälle mitään ennen seuraavaa aamua. Mielestäni kokonaisuus oli sekava, ja kokonaisteokseen (mukaanlukien siis lavastus, musiikki, teksti ja teatteri - mutta lähinnä teatteri ja teksti) oli ympätty liikaa, mutta ei tarpeeksi, että se olisi äärilleen viety, eli toimiva superfarssi. Juoni ei alun jälkeen juuri selvinnyt, ja teksti oli hyvin koukeroinen - ja musiikin ja esiintymisen koukerot eivät menneet tarpeeksi usein myötäkarvaa että viesti olisi mennyt perille.

Tämä sanottu, isot kuorokohtaukset olivat todella vaikuttavia, ja Fenicen palokohtaus yksi ikimuistoisempia hetkiä Olavinlinnassa ikinä (ajatella, että sekin lähinnä rajatun, odottavanoloisen musiikin ja valaistuksen kautta! ihanan yksinkertaista). Musiikki oli rikasta, mutta se oli usein jotenkin paniikinomaista, ja maanista. Silti minusta muun teoksen staffin (libretisti, lavastajan, sirkuskoreografin jne.) olisi pitänyt luottaa paremmin Hakolan scoreen - esityksestä jäi vähän sellainen maku, että kaiken sen muun sälän oli tarkoitus viedä huomiota pois musiikista ja juonesta. Ja niiden sirkuspellettien epätoivoinen Fenicenpelastusyritys vaikutti minun silmissäni Savonlinnan Oopperajuhlien pelastusyritykseltä ('Senza aqua!' = 'Ei ole rahaa!! Hahahaa!') - tosin ei siitä sen enempää, onhan tänä vuonna oopperajuhlilla peräti kolme uutta (tilaus)oopperaa, ja ensi vuonnakin tulossa yksi.

Eli viihdyttävän maaninen, muttei tarpeeksi maaninen, että teoksen voisi sanoa olleen mieletön, hulvaton kulttuuripoliittinen/ihmisluonteenkuvauksen farssi. Siitä jäätiin mielestäni muutaman pisteen päähän. Jos sama materiaali olisi levitetty tunnin pitemmälle esitykselle (tot. 3h), niin kokonaisuus olisi ehkä toiminut sulavammin. Nyt teoksessa oli hieman kiireen makua. Toisaalta, jos materiaali olisi paisunut vielä kiireisemmäksi ja kreisimmäksi, niin tuo 2h olisi voinut tuntua kuin juoksulta tuulikonetta vastaan, nauttien joka hektisestä hetkestä. Väliin mielestäni siis jäätiin.

Mutta, musiikki oli rehellistä.

Café Eloísa

Was a delightful pop-up restaurant to put up, the said delightfulness being heavily contested with it’s namesake Eloísa, my 1,5-year-old niece, who honoured us with her discerning presence. The weather was ideal, and we (myself and Samuli) found that we’d timed the event perfectly so the sun shined onto the terrace in Kumpula, Helsinki from exactly noon to five o’clock. All the food – quinoa, sauces, coffee and bread – went, and we raised over 80 euros to be donated Lastenklinikoiden Kummit ry. A big thank you to everyone – the bicycle gang, the army of prams and the guy with the scheming cat in a cage attached to the back of his bike – who made this hang out spread on the lawn, on the swings and the sandbox and far beyond what we expected.

 

As a gift, to enjoy today at home on a winters night, some recipes:

Quinoa

Rince, and boil for 15mins in the double the amount of water as there is quinoa.

Baba ganoush

Well known, with as many variations as there are recipes,

Slice aubergines (2 big ones), and roast them in the oven on both sides for 20-30mins until soft and slightly coloured. Remove skin, and mash into paste with a blender. Add tahini (2 ts), oil (2 ts), salt, leaf parsley and mix together. (feeds: not a lot of people, our lot from 5 aubergines, meant to feed 20, vanished within half an hour, feeding around 10 people)

Seca

Boil peeled and diced Swedes (1,5 kg) until soft, remove water (save it for later) and make into mash. Fry spinach (600g, should’ve been 1.5kg) in oil that you’ve just fried an onion in until soft. Add fried spinach and onion to swede-mash and blend together. Add coriander, salt, lime juice and pepper.

Asparagus mayonnaise

Make mayonnaise (Sami Garam’s recipe is simple as: eggs, mustard, salt, sugar, pepper, lemon juice/vinagre and oil in a tall jar – place hand blender carefully at the bottom, and mix at full speed. Keep doing so until all the oil from the top has been slowly sucked into the white paste at the bottom) using more eggs and less oil. Mash peeled and boiled asparaguses (from the can) and carefully add to the mayonnaise, keeping it airy. In the version with tuna, add one or two cans of (mashed) tuna to one can of asparagus. Chopped spring onions on top.

Buckwheat-carrot rieska

Boil ground buckwheat for 7 minutes, until it resembles porridge. Add grated carrots, some water and salt, and mix together. Pour mix onto an oven plate covered till the edges with baking paper, and make even (1cm-1.5cm thick). Cook in oven for c. 1h. Let cool before slicing into pieces for serving.

Toilet in tower

Rather than saying I had a dream, I’m going to say – like a mother-tongue Finnish speaker often does – I saw a dream about the WTC twin towers last night. Although I had conversations with surrounding people in the dream, the visuals of it were what made it worth writing about.

This is what I saw:

A new observation tower had been built on Ground Zero in NYC. It was made up of a thin concrete spire, the size of one or two elevator shafts, pendeling with elevators carrying around 5 people. The spire lead to a peculiar observation deck: It was made up of the top stories of both WTC towers, joined together at one of their four corners by a small bridge-like space, which served as the platform onto which people would move onto when getting off the elevators. The upper stories of the (former) two towers, both identical, were empty and very airy spaces with very large windows, and floors that tilted away into all directions from the central platform. The floors were thin, rather large slabs of smooth concrete that seemed to float solidly on top of the several hundred meters of air separating the deck from the street-level. The slabs were not joined together; where I expected to see the seams, there were long, thumb-wide crevasses through which you could see the city underneath your feet.

Although there seemed to be a strong wind blowing, and heavy occasional rain, the feeling in this strange, precarious bird’s nest was of gentle acrophobia. I didn’t seem to mind the fact that occasionally it felt as though you were dangerously walking on air, under an equally pseudo-inexistent steel-embroidered roof. Perhaps this was because I felt that I should make the most of it and stop worrying, I had after all paid to be up there and travelled to NYC with this as one of my ticks on the list. I recall there was a gift shop as well – can’t remember what I got from there if anything. Probably postcards. Or one of these stretched quarters that you could press yourself with a handle-operated machine. I think I’ve still got the one we made in 2000, when me and my family last visited NYC and it’s twin towers, because the queue at the Empire State building was too long (got to say, me and my sisters were disappointed that there wasn’t anyone selling Klav Kalash and crab juice at the WTC plaza. But we did test the toilets).

Can’t wait to travel there again later this year.

Double Swansong

Granted, Schubert's 8th 'Unfinished' Symphony wasn't technically his dying piece, but I can't help but feeling 'death on manuscript paper' may have a gimmick in the programmers' mind for tonight's concert at the Musiikkitalo in Helsinki - featuring the aforementioned Schubert alongside the Mahler Mastodont, the 9th Symphony.

The musicians of the FRSO were - for the most part - on fire, with the lead of the curvy Jukka-Pekka Saraste. Every individual player with some significant soloistic contributions - meaning everyone in the Mahler - brought their interpretations with unforeseen crust and character. This was most apparent in the multi-dimensional third movement:

The miniature theater of the musicians was gripping to watch. It was as if they were playing interlocking chamber-pieces on a joint stage, all in fresh pseudo-coincidental nonchalance. "So what!" cackles the triple-stranger from his untimely grave along with every sudden change of mood. When I say sudden, I really mean that while listening, I have no idea how long Mahler streches or how quickly he compresses an idea - they get centrifuged so fast that it's one and the same if he brings strands from the outside or from within the 'first bar'-nucleus. Useless to follow the entries of the theme for further than the first couple of minutes, this 3rd movement is a wave that can only be understood in hindsight. The logic burns through with the entry and exit of the klezmer band.

Burleske. So what.

Yes I have recently seen Into the Wild

but I'd rather bring this quote to your attention:

Jotkut tulkitsevat totuuden etsimisen väärin. Heistä tulee fanaatikkoja, jotka sulkeutuvat omaan totuuteensa, ja yrittävät pakottaa myös muut omaksumaan sen

-Paavi kommunisteista Kuubassa 3/2012 (poimittu Metro-lehdestä 29.3.2012)

----

Some interpret the seeking of truth erroneously. They become fanatics that enclose themselves into their own truth and try to force others to adopt it as well

-the Pope on communists, in Cuba March 2012 (quote from the Helsinki Metro-newspaper 29.3.2012, trans.auth.)

Nothing but a snow storm can stop

me from getting to the Netherlands today, to attend the 2012 YCM Forum in Apeldoorn - running until Friday 24th February. Or, if I can carefully say, not apparently even a snow storm. At Helsinki-Vantaa, they are not uncommon, and so it seems to be business as usual.

I spend some time this morning deciding whether to put on the usual pair of long johns, if only for the short transfer to the airport, but what's really on my mind is that I'm secretly hoping I would be wearing them this week, and that another Siberian wave will freeze the canals again. Pea-soup on the ice, with mustard. Am I only dreaming?

http://www.ereprijs.nl/YCM/YCM20121924februari.aspx