CD Review: Saariaho and the Flute

K. Saariaho, Music for Flute, C. Hoitenga, Da Camera of Houston (released on November 13, 2015) Ondine ode1276-2 | 71'04"

Charles T. Downey, Kaija Saariaho: Let the Wind Speak
Washington Post, March 27

Kaija Saariaho searches exhaustively for new sounds in her music. The Finnish composer has used computers and electronic sounds and processes, but she has also worked with specific performers to explore the boundaries of the sounds traditional instruments can make. Saariaho’s partner in the creation of many of her new pieces for flute, including for her outstanding flute concerto “L’aile du songe” from 2001, has been the flutist Camilla Hoitenga. Born in Michigan but based part of the year in Germany, Hoitenga met Saariaho in 1982, at the International Summer Courses for New Music in Darmstadt, and they have collaborated ever since. Now, Hoitenga has released an anthology of Saariaho’s flute work.

Other composers have explored this terrain before, but Saariaho makes these experimental effects part of an overall color scheme...

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