Kraftverk – Open to Interpretation

Event Introduction

On the Night of the Arts, 20 August, the Tulkinnanvaraista forum(opens a new tab) – a cultural partner of the National Library of Finland – will bring to Cupola Hall a multi-sensory performance speculating on Jean Sibelius’s experimental music. The work in question is Juho Laitinen’s composition Kraftverk, for synthesisers, a narrator and dancers.

Kraftverk takes its inspiration from a letter Jean Sibelius sent to his uncle Pehr in October 1888, in which he considers whether musical vibrations might serve as a power source for urban infrastructure. He also describes a chord cluster that could generate energy with maximum efficiency, one he claims cannot be found “anywhere else but in my experimental music”. Sibelius moreover emerges as a pioneer of acoustic ecology in his reflections on the impact of a sound field on the environment: in the long run, he suggests, the “animal magnetism” produced would render both urban residents and animals rather peculiar.

The letter inspired composer, pedagogue and scholar Juho Laitinen, who leads the Tulkinnanvaraista forum. He has studied extensively in Finland and abroad, and his work in recent years has focused on the performance practices and pedagogy of avant-garde music.

The work opens to the public at 18.00. A concert-like, melodramatic segment featuring a reading of Sibelius’s letter, set to the sounds of a Jupiter synth, will be performed twice: at 18.30 and 19.30.

Kraftverk takes the form of a three-hour electroacoustic installation, which the audience is free to explore, experiencing the effects of vibration on mind and body as they move through the space. Artists from the avant-garde music and performance collective Naarmu will act as anthropomorphic mediators.

Join us for this unique experience at the National Library’s Cupola Hall on 20 August from 18.00 to 21.00.

Categories

Performance, Inside, Music, Dance