Erkki Salmenhaara (1941-2002) was yet another of those composers who in the 1960s turned his back on serialism and returned to tonal roots, creating some powerful music in the process. We can hear this very clearly in the four works included here. Le bateau ivre begins with simple harmonies and grows more complex, employing the “sound field” technique of Ligeti only at a lower level of dissonance and with more melodic interest. It was composed in 1965/66, and by the time he came to write Suomi-Finland in 1966, Salmenhaara was back to writing tunes, and very fetching ones too. A modern take on Sibelius’ Finlandia, you can hear the ghost of Finland’s greatest composer in the bold climaxes and hymn-like writing for strings. Although still generously sprinkled with crunching dissonance, tonality decisively wins through.
La fille en mini-jupe (The Girl in the Mini-Skirt) takes as its starting point Debussy’s The Girl with the Flaxen Hair, tossing in Beethoven’s Waldstein sonata and a few other references for good measure. Less impressionist than simply strange, it’s another work with some devastatingly beautiful melodic writing at its collage-like heart, and sentiment never seems to sink far below the surface. The Adagietto is simply lovely. At the beginning a lone oboe above darkly sonorous strings creates a sound that we might recognize as distinctly Finnish; and later, the long, lyrical lines alternate with a sort of “ticking clock” motive that has some of the same gentle mystery as similar passages in Holst’s The Hymn of Jesus or even Jerry Goldsmith’s soundtrack to the first Alien film.
There are times that the music risks turning static. The alternation of dissonance and consonance as a structural principle only gets you so far, and Salmenhaara seems to recognize this in providing consistently ear-catching orchestration in addition to the attractive themes. This keeps the textures interesting despite the generally slow pacing and lack of conventional development, but his success in this respect will be very much a matter of personal taste. Certainly Eri Klas and the Tampere Philharmonic do an excellent job in sustaining tension and creating the necessary evocative atmosphere that each work inhabits, and Ondine’s sonics uphold the generally very high standards of the house. It will take a few more listening sessions for Salmanhaara’s distinctive voice to fully register, but to me there’s little question that he does have a voice, and an attractive one at that. If you’re one of those listeners who is adventurous without being masochistic, then you will likely enjoy these works as much as I did, and I recommend them enthusiastically.
