The composer that Finland forgot
NewsToday is the centenary of the birth of Joonas Kokkonen.
From the 1960s to the 1980s, he was the leading Finnish symphonist, citing Bartók and Bach as major influences and sharing an international award with Witold Lutoslawski. His 1975 opera “The Last Temptations” was performed internationally over 300 times, including a 1983 appearance at the Metropolitan Opera.
As a leading national figure, Kokkonen was pressed into service on multiple committees and achieved a boom in state funding for orchestras and opera. The meetings stole time and energy from his composing practive and his later years were barren.
Listened to his Cello Concerto this week, spurred on by Ondine’s social media campaign promoting Kokkonen’s work – it was quite a good work! Looking forward to listening to more of his compositions in the nearby future through recordings (or hopefully live performances!)
His is a legacy of wonderful music that includes the four symphonies, a cello concerto, and chamber music such as this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Tk_nvqwpLo
A composer who actually put dots on the page and thus partly paved the way (along with Aarre Merikanto, who taught Einojuhani Rautavaara) for Kalevi Aho, whom many see as Finland’s leading composer of the present day.
Kokkonen’s music was a bit too variable for it to catch on, and his formalism doesn’t easily appeal. The best is, nonetheless, very good and worth seeking out. Start with the Cello Concerto, the third and fourth symphonies, ‘durch einen Spiegel,’ “The last temptations”, his second string quartet, and the piano quintet.
Thanks for the heads-up regarding the chamber music. I have loved the 4th Symphony since first hearing it around 1975.
I saw ‘The Last Temptations’ in London and in Finland. I can’t remember whether it was Helsinki or Savonlinna. A most impressive opera. I never heard any other work of his. These comments incline me to sampling some. Thanks for the recommendations.
No, Finland didn’t. The Lahti Symphony Orchestra recorded his complete orchestral output, which is available to this day on 5 CDs on the BIS label, all recordings supervised by the composer himself. I remember it clearly, since I produced them, and I remember equally clearly the nice parties in his unique home, designed by Alvar Aalto. An odd thing with his music was that he never composed even one single sound for the tuba, which made him very popular with the orchestra’s tubist…
And his favourite story:
Kokko, kokoo koko kokko! Koko kokkoko? Koko kokko.
(Meaning: Kokko(nen), put together the whole bonfire. All of it? Yes)
Robert mentions two interesting points re: Joonas Kokkonen. The
first being his residence, “Villa Kokkonen,” located along Lake
Tuusala, north of Helsinki. In 1967,
Alvar Aalto drew up designs for the structure, which was built on the west shore of the lake. It was, perhaps, the last in a series of homes built in the area by prominent Finnish
artists: Juhani Aho (1897), Eero
Järnefelt (1901), Pekka Halonen (1902), and Jean Sibelius (1904).
Re: the tuba, it’s interesting to note that at some point following his Second Symphony, Sibelius commented that one should be able to compose for the orchestra without using this instrument. Yet,
in one of his later works, the incidental music to “The
Tempest,” Sibelius once again
utilizes the tuba.
Norman’s article has a link to one of the BIS albums. – Rather, what is meant is that Kokkonen has been pretty much forgotten after his death. A decade might easily go without a single (!) performance of his symphonies; that’s what oblivion means. Not many parties for his centenary either…..
Thanks for the tip. I’ve just ordered the set.
Given what Mozart did with the Papagena/Papageno duet, one wonders what he would have done with the bonfire joke.
Kokkonen’s 4th Symphony is IMO a minor masterpiece. A great shame his ill-health prevented him from writing more. His Cello Concerto is also very fine.
I think Kokkonen’s oeuvre is still undergoing a critical re-evaluation in his native Finland, and the relative silence around his centenary is partly a reaction to the political power he wielded back in the days (his staunchly conservative views and opposition to popular music and the radicalism of younger generations dictated for a long time what was being commissioned, performed and broadcast in Finland) and the way he was held up as a living national monument, or a “new Sibelius” of sorts. It is not a coincidence that his residence was close to Sibelius’ and designed by Alvar Aalto, who held a similar position in postwar Finnish architecture.
While he was firmly rooted to the Germanic symphonic tradition (practically all of his published works are built around a Beethovenian/Sibelian “germ motive”), I feel Kokkonen’s style is also firmly rooted in the severe Pietist religiosity of rural Finland where he was brought up, also not coincidentally the subject matter of his only opera. As an example, this shows in the way Kokkonen’s rhythmic vocabulary seems to be limited to the terse, even gait of Finnish hymns and chorales, sometimes augmented with Bartókian motor rhythms and Expressionist outbursts. His later works are slightly more colourful in expression, but even in them, the occasional flashes of orchestral color seem to have mystical undertones and associate with religious visions and ecstasy. All of this combined with its generally introverted, objective (the German “Sachlich” is a better expression) character makes Kokkonen’s music probably forever difficult to palate for the wider non-domestic audience, and the conductor Hannu Lintu once mentioned in an interview that his attempts to program Kokkonen with French or American orchestras have been met with “mute amazement, even animosity”.
Ah, this does explain why YLE Klassinen had so much of his music on last week. Very, very nice.