A page of contemporary music is closing: the Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho, considered one of the greatest of her time, died Friday in Paris at the age of 70.
Suffering from cancer since early 2021, she died “in her bed, at home in Paris”, her family said in a statement, while the music publishing house Chester Music, with whom she had worked since 1986 , recalled how much she “fought” with “strength and grace” against the disease.
Like other opera houses, the Royal Opera in London said it was “saddened” by her passing, and hailed her as “one of the most important composers of our time”.
The Carnegie Hall in New York, the Opéra de Paris, the Fenice in Venice have also saluted the memory of this composer, figurehead of a generation of Finnish artists and one of the rare women to have broken the glass ceiling. in a still very masculine environment.
In France, where she had been living since the 1980s with her husband, composer Jean-Baptiste Barrière, Kaija Saariaho had been crowned in 2022 at the Victoires de la musique Classique for her opera Innocenceabout a school shooting.
An opera that has become a “modern classic”, in the words of the Telegraph.
“The representation ofInnocence just a few weeks ago at the Royal Opera House was — for all who experienced it — one of the most moving and moving evenings in theatre,” said Royal Opera Director Oliver Mears on Friday.
This lyrical thriller in several languages caused a sensation at the Festival d’art lyrique d’Aix-en-Provence, in the south of France, in 2021. It took Kaija Saariaho seven years to give birth to this work to which participated two of his compatriots: the novelist Sofi Oksanen (Purge), who wrote the original libretto, and conductor Susanna Mälkki.
Last concerto
Kaija Saariaho’s career has been associated with Quebec on several occasions, since the OSM had commissioned one of the two works from him to accompany the inauguration of the Pierre-Béique organ.
The performance of his opera love from afar directed by Robert Lepage was, in 2015, one of the great moments in the history of the Festival d’Opéra de Québec. This production was then revived at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
The recording of this opera by conductor Kent Nagano, with the German Symphony Orchestra in Berlin, won a Grammy in the United States in 2011.
Kaija Saariaho was made Honorary Doctor of McGill University in 2013. Kent Nagano himself delivered the induction speech.
will follow Adriana Mater, also to a libretto by Amin Maalouf, premiered at the Opéra Bastille in 2006, and Only The Sound Remainspremiered in Amsterdam and revived in 2018 at the Paris Opera.
If his works were recognized from the 80s, it was only at the beginning of the 21ste century that the Finn has become a figurehead of contemporary music and opera.
Born Kaija Anneli Laakkonen on October 14, 1952 in Helsinki, she grew up in a family with no connection to music. As a child, she learned to play the piano and the violin.
She then studied composition at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, with the composer Paavo Heininen (who died in 2022), then in Germany. She then moved to Paris in 1982 to study at Ircam, the Institute for Acoustic/Music Research and Coordination created by Pierre Boulez and which combines musical creation and scientific research.
A mother of two children, Aleksi Barrière and Aliisa Neige Barrière, she spent the last months of her life finalizing her trumpet concerto HUSH which will be presented for the first time in Helsinki on August 24, her family said.
In March, the Finnish President, Sauli Niinistö, gave him the honorary title of Academician of the Arts, held by a handful of artists (11 at the time).