Disc Details

Contents

Reviews

• It’s a chamber cantata, and a very fine one indeed. Sallinen’s text uses poems by Lassi Nummi (brother of composer Seppo) and sections from the new Finnish translations of the Bible; it is cast in seven ‘dialogues’: a nocturne, three scenes presenting an Easter narrative, a pas de deux, passacaglia and finale. Sallinen uses a kind of ritual lyricism: there’s a formality here, but also a warmth and naturalness – the characters may be archetypes but they are still people.
  
  I was delighted to find the accordion featuring so prominently in Sallinen’s seven-piece instrumental ensemble: it’s a colour that composers have neglected for too long.
  
  Sallinen’s Barabbas Dialogues is a powerful (if understated) and moving work, and its modest forces should allow it access to performing spaces where the grander demands of his operas can’t be met.
  Martin Anderson, Finnish Music Quarterly, 01 June 2006
• At times one feels that the work definitely has the qualities of a song-cycle, at others that it is a dramatic piece, but essentially, it pulls the listener into its own world.
  
  Written in 2002-03, the Dialogues gives us Sallinen at his most profound and magical. He has constructed a text, from the the new Finnish translation of the Bible and words by the remarkable poet Lassi Nummi, that not only facilitates a tremendous dramatic sweep but simultaneously allows for an extremely reflective, introspective style in which the composer makes full use of his unusual ensemble (there are five singers and a narrator, accordion, violin, cello, flute, clarinet, percussion and piano). This group allows rich, string-based textures, magical percussive glitterings (provoking memories of The King Goes Forth to France), quasi-orchestrally haloed ariosi (again the operas come to mind, notably Ratsumies), and provides a large palette of colour for Sallinen's ever-idiosyncratic modern-post-modern harmonic and melodic procedures - and one more opera, Kullervo, is suggested by the occasional blues-inflected lines. A rich recipe, and one that could fall apart, given the apparent looseness of the structure, but Sallinen knows exactly how to deal out the tension in the right measure and interlink apparently disparate moments. Perhaps the penultimate Dialogue, an impassioned passacaglia, is the crux of the work, preparing the way for the darkly serene finale.
  
  This fascinating, challenging work receives a first-class recording, made at the Naantali Music Festival in June 2004. An essential recording for anyone interested in contemporary Finnish music.
  Ivan Moody, International Record Review, 01 December 2005