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Jennifer Koh (JANETTE BECKMAN )

It’s always tempting, on the occasions I have to write about orchestral music, to pretend to know far more than I do. Fear of being ‘found out’ can be great inhibitor. However, if the WSO’s New Music Festival has taught me anything over its 21 years, it is that no one should be afraid of terms such as ‘symphony,’ ‘orchestra’ or even ‘new music,' regardless of what assumptions these words evoke. The idea is to get into the hall and hear something new.

And so it was, at the opening concert of this year’s New Music Festival, that I was treated to two works by Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho and another by Georgian Giya Kancheli. Prior to the announcement of this year’s NMF program I’d been blissfully unaware of either composer, but I left Saturday’s show impressed by Saariaho’s willingness to play with traditional orchestral forms in her two pieces, Du cristal… and Graal Théâtre, and by Kancheli’s use of viola and vocal chorus to invoke the mythical journey of the dead in Styx.

Saariaho is a new composer to the WSO (Du cristal… was a Canadian premiere), and the 59-year-old Helsinki-born Paris resident was on hand to see her work performed.
In the hands of conductor/music director Alexander Mickelthwate and the WSO (augmented by Will Bonness on synthesizer — electronic instruments are part of many of Saariaho’s compositions), Du Cristal… became a smoky (thanks to CBC TV for the moody fog), at-times-thundering journey into the sub-atomic world. As percussion bursts and swelling squalls of single notes evoked the collision of matter, so too did quiet string passages and tinkling triangles signal cohesion and, ultimately, crystallization.

Graal Théâtre: For violin and orchestra was another type of composition altogether. American violinist Jennifer Koh brought a wonderful physicality to Saariaho’s two-movement work, which calls for both delicate tonality and sharp, ferocious bursts of notes (a friend said she was "shredding"). As obviously good, and as theatrical, as Koh is, Graal Théâtre’s struggle between soliloquy and chorus (or soloist and orchestra) ultimately seemed unresolved. Perhaps a third movement, or act, is called for.

Kancheli’s Styx made up the second half of the evening, and it took a different tack altogether. WSO principal violist Daniel Scholz was the featured soloist and he set the rich tones of his instrument against the beautiful vocalizations of the 100-or-so voices of the Canadian Mennonite University Chorus.

Kancheli’s piece was dedicated to two recently deceased friends at the time of its writing
and is set up as a personal interpretation of the Greek myth of Charon and his role as ferryman of the souls of the newly dead across the Styx to Hades. The choir seems to voice both the lamentations of the composer and the howls of the dead, while Scholz’s viola narrated both Charon’s lonely task and emoted the sorrowful nature of loss.

The play between the two, each coloured by orchestral augmentation, made for a loud-quiet-loud composition that would easily appeal to fans of early-‘90s alt-rock. It didn’t look as though there too many Pixies fans in the New Music Fest’s opening night audience. Perhaps there should have been.