Photo by Mikko Mäntyniemi

IMPRESSIONS DU NORD - Nordic songs

I have always been drawn to impressionistic art and music. The delicately nuanced colour palette and the endlessly interesting harmonic possibilities never cease to nurture my fascination. As a child I loved going through my parents´ record collection, comprising all kinds of music. Hearing Debussy´s Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune for the first time was a something of a magical experience - the kind of experience only art can provide: that feeling of being completely absorbed by something you don’t really understand. For a long time I did not dare to sing any music by Debussy, in fear of ruining that magic I had experienced at my first encounter.

This album includes a repertoire of Nordic composers influenced by French impressionism and Debussy’s music in particular. The idea appeared somewhat incidentally in a discussion with my husband about what I could do for a new concert programme. “You love Nordic music and the vocal repertoire of the impressionistic era, how about searching out some impressionistic traces in the Nordic music?”, he said. Juho was into this idea, too, and so we started our search for songs.

In Finland, both Kuula and Madetoja are known for taking influence from impressionism and I knew many of their songs would suit the programme. After spending extensive time at the National Library in Oslo going through music by several composers I decided to add songs by Hurum and Hall. I also received helpful advice from the principle of the Norwegian State Academy of Music, Astrid Kvalbein, who did her doctorate on the music of Pauline Hall. I was very pleased to be able to include a female composer who had a pioneering position in the establishment of the contemporary music movement in Norway. I am also proud to be able to present some of her lesser known work, transcribed from her original and unpublished hand-written manuscript. As a performer, I find the search for non-standard repertoire to be important. There are so many songs to discover that deserve to be heard. Juho brought in Nystroem´s song cycle Sånger vid havet. This work was originally written for Finnish soprano Aulikki Rautavaa, and so I decided to perform the work with Finnish-Swedish pronunciation rather than in Standard Swedish.  

My collaboration with Juho started after we both graduated from the Sibelius-Academy in Helsinki around 2010. Our biggest challenge is to coordinate our timetables since we live in different countries. In a truly collaborative manner, we often end up in passionate discussions about how to approach and interpret the music, songs and lyrics. While intensity will sometimes rise, we seem to have a way of turning our disagreement into productivity - and having fun along the way. The musical outcome is usually different from what we both had previously imagined, which illustrate the beauty of the process of making music!

Released in January 2022 by Alba Records

Artists Melis Jaatinen & Juho Alakärppä

Produced by Gustav Djupsjöbacka

Recording, editing & mastering Matti Heinonen / Pro Audile

Executive producer Erkki Nisonen

Photos by Mikko Mäntyniemi

This record has been supported by The Finnish Cultural Foundation (SKR)