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Premiere of the Month: Lotta Wennäkoski on her new violin concerto

2023-11-03T09:16:00

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A new violin concerto follows the contours of speech

Finnish composer Lotta Wennäkoski’s new violin concerto, Prosoidia, is the product of two converging themes. ‘I started to plan the piece in the spring of 2022, when my neighbouring country attacked its neighbour,’ she says about the onset of the Russia–Ukraine war. ‘I felt so much helplessness that it was obvious I somehow had to write an emotional piece.’ The second influence was the phenomenon of prosody: the stresses, rhythm and ‘music in language’, she says. The work will be performed by Ilya Gringolts, who Wennäkoski describes as having an ‘inner peace when he plays’…

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