Barabbas Dialogues is a major statement by one of today’s leading composers. It is highly original and imaginative in form, yet its musical style is in a relatively accessible post-Modern tonal idiom. Most important, to a reasonably experienced and attentive listener, the music is comprehensible and communicative, in large part because the tonal direction is always clear, even when the music gets highly dissonant.
Composed in 2002 and 2003, Aulis Sallinen’s Barabbas Dialogues is a very large work that could be classified as a dramatic song cycle. It is for five singers (each of whom portrays a specific character), narrator, and seven instrumentalists, and it explores the emotional states of Barabbas, released in place of Jesus through no effort of his own, and also of Judas. The other three characters are called The Woman, The Maiden, and The Youth. The texts are from the Bible (Gospels, Acts, Job, Song of Songs, and Ecclesiastes) and from poetry by Lassi Nummi (one of the translators of the most recent Finnish version of the Bible), with additional lines by Sallinen.
The music is both dramatic and lyrical, and its primary effect is of a thoughtful meditation on the meaning and lessons of the story. It may be too early to determine whether the work’s unusual performing forces and length–as well as the fact that its text is in a language relatively few people understand–will ensure its neglect, or doom it to obscurity. But this striking music certainly does not deserve that fate.
The recording was made during the 2004 Naantali Music Festival, and it sounds like a fully professional effort: clear, focused, dynamically wide-ranging, well-balanced, and clean. The intriguingly-chosen small instrumental ensemble, including the important part for accordion, supports the voices well and provides a constantly fresh variety of color. All the singing is very good. Under Ralf Gothoni’s excellently paced direction, this is an involving performance of an important work.
