Biography

Lotta WENNÄKOSKI

© Fennica Gehrman/Maarit Kytöharju

The music of Lotta Wennäkoski (b. 1970) has been performed at an increasing rate around the world especially after her success with Flounce premiered at the ‘Last Night of the Proms’ on 9 September 2017.

Wennäkoski studied at the Budapest Conservatory as well as at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki and completed her studies in the Netherlands with Louis Andriessen. Among the first orchestral commissions are Sakara (Helsinki Philharmonic/Esa-Pekka Salonen, 2003), Hava (Tapiola Sinfonietta, 2008) and the Flute Concerto Soie (Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, 2009) which was chosen as one of the recommended works at the Unesco International Rostrum of Composers. The Scottish Chamber Orchestra commissioned Verdigris from Wennäkoski for a premiere in 2015.

Lotta Wennäkoski’s music is often marked by transparent timbres and dreamy glissandos but there is also drive, energy and humour in her works. According to Gramophone, her highly individual way with orchestration, incredible economy of means and discernible musical goals make for music that cleanses the ear with its originality. 

Her works include Jong (2013), in which the soloist with a chamber orchestra is a juggler, music for the silent movie Amor omnia (2012) and Susurrus, a guitar concerto co-commissioned by the Kymi and Tapiola Sinfoniettas. Flounce was commissioned and premiered by the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Proms in 2017. It was a curtain raiser and became an international hit which has been performed around the world. The Danish String Quartet premiered her string quartet Pige at the Carnegie Hall on 21 April 2022 and several performances followed in the US, Canada and Europe.

Hele for 12 players was commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association and Gustavo Dudamel and the first performance took place in 2018. Om fotspår och ljus (Of Footprints and Light, 2019) was written for the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra as the first part of its Helsinki Variations series.

Among Wennäkoski’s major works is the violin concerto Prosoidia premiered by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and violinist Ilya Gringolts in 2023. It was co-commissioned by the BBC, Lahti and Norrlandsoperan Symphony Orchestras. The Savonlinna Opera Festival commissioned an opera from Wennäkoski. The libretto for Regine tells the story of philosopher Søren Kierkegaard’s fiancé, Regine Olsen.

Lotta Wennäkoski’s music has been focused by many festivals and orchestras. The Finnish RSO chose her as its spotlight composer in the 2021/2022 season and commissioned the harp concerto Sigla. She was Composer-in-Residence at the Oremandsgaard chamber music festival in Denmark in 2023, and in 2024 several festivals have highlighted her music in Finland.

Her CDs have received critical acclaim. The Ondine disc including Flounce, Sedecim and Sigla won the British Gramophone Award for the best release in the contemporary category in 2023. The US National Public Radio named her Flounce on its list of top 10 classical recordings of the year. Wennäkoski has also written a wealth of chamber music which is presented in the Alba-CD album Zeng released in 2023.

Work(s)

" Prosoidia "

For violin and orchestra

Publication : Fennica Gehrman

2024 SELECTION

The word “prosody” refers to the musical properties of speech: rhythm, pitch, stress and pauses. So surely music is actually prosody, i.e. speech without the semantic dimension? This fascinating thought was the basic premise for my violin concerto. The title Prosoidia is the original Greek form of the word. The concerto was commissioned jointly by the BBC, the Lahti Symphony Orchestra and Norrlandsoperan. My warm thanks go to the soloist, Ilya Gringolts, for his collaboration over both the commission and the moulding of the solo part.

I began drafting my concerto in spring 2022, shortly after Russia launched its brutal assault on neighbouring Ukraine. The war made – and still makes – me feel very sad, helpless and frustrated. As the motto for my concerto I chose a pacifist line penned by the Russian Marina Tsvetayeva. As the First World War raged in 1915, she wrote:

No need for people anywhere on earth to struggle.

Look — it is evening, look, it is nearly night:

What have you to say, O poet, general, lover?

The first movement of the concerto, О чем — поэты, любовники, полководцы? (So what have you to say, O poet, general, lover?) features linguistic performance instructions inspired by prosody, such as parlando (like speaking) and sussurrando (like whispering). The second movement, Word Stress, alludes both to Finnish and to a language, Hungarian, that is a hobby of mine; in both, the stress is always on the first syllable of a word. This movement also affords a glimpse of a folk song arrangement I made, and through it my relationship to the violin, which I briefly studied as a youngster, and specifically in Hungary.

In reflecting on prosody, I was also reminded of a scene from the film Viskningar och rop (Cries & Whispers) directed by Ingmar Bergman. Two sisters begin to speak to each other again after many years’ silence, and the moment is full of charge and consolation. Bergman fades the speech until it is no longer audible and replaces it with the Sarabande movement from Bach’s fifth solo cello suite. The emotional, melancholy third movement of my concerto is in fact called Prosody (BWV 1011 & Bergman), and the listener may well detect echoes of material from Bach’s Sarabande. I have dedicated the movement to the memory of my former teacher Kaija Saariaho, who died in June 2023.

Lotta Wennäkoski