Liisa Pohjola, Professor of the piano at the Sibelius Academy since 1976, has always been a champion of new music throughout her career as a musician. In addition to premiering numerous Finnish solo piano works and concertos (among them many by Meriläinen), she regularly performs them at concerts both in Finland and abroad and has been recording them ever since the 1960s.
Like Erik Bergman and Einojuhani Rautavaara, Usko Meriläinen, a pupil of Aarre Merikanto, went to study with Vladimir Vogel in the late 1950s, returning with a bunch of fresh ideas. In the course of his travels through neoclassicism, expressionism, and dodecaphony, he developed a style all of his own, the dominant element of which is, in Liisa Pohjola’s opinion, the presence of nature.
LP: How Finnish musical life has changed since the late 1950s and early 1960s! The profile of both the professional composer and the professional artist was quite different in those days. The only way a musician could make a living was by finding gigs in restaurants or by doing some completely other sort of job.
On the other hand, artists commanded a certain respect. There were so few of them compared with today, and they were ‘common property’ in a way they are not today, because they were constantly on tour in Finland. Ostrobothnia, where I lived as a child, was visited by artists every year, and we always looked forward to their visits so much: Aulikki Rautawaara, Anja Ignatius, Timo Mikkilä, Lea Piltti… an opera troupe led by Alfons Almi; a piano trio doubling as a whole orchestra, playing works like Cavalleria rusticana and Die Fledermaus. And the concerts were usually packed.
Sometimes it was terribly difficult to get hold of copies of music. It was very rare for new works to be printed. In most cases, we had to study them from the manuscripts… luckily Usko here has a neat hand! Even so, I miss those days!
UM: You’re right. After the war, the Finns had a tremendous thirst for culture. You didn’t just go along to the cinema in those days; you always had to book beforehand. The place for concerts in Tampere was the town hall – beautiful but small for an orchestra. But we heard some of the great masters there: Rubinstein, Alexander Hellman, and dozens of Finnish artists, and they would give recitals of their own.
One thing must be said for the Tampere Philharmonic and Eero Kosonen: they were always performing new Finnish music. It was a matter of honour for Kosonen that if a new work was premiered in Helsinki, then the second performance had to be in Tampere. It was an excellent principle! The orchestra was in fact well trained in the performance of new music.
Hot, cold, lukewarm
LP: In the olden days, there were not nearly so many concert pianists, either. So the few of us who were on the circuit had our hands full all the time: we regularly got invited both to appear as soloists and to give recitals.
Even so, I very soon felt I wanted to try something new and unfamiliar. One of the first modern pieces I performed in public was Messiaen’s Cantéyodjayâ. To me, it is one of the most complex and most enigmatic works Messiaen ever wrote. This is just the sort of music I tended to choose: strange, enchanting, remote, and difficult!
I remember some of the reactions in the press: “like elephants dancing on the piano keys,” said one; and “Quo vadis?” asked another critic at the end of his review. And when I performed new Finnish piano works, such as yours, Usko, people called out in horror with things like, “you’ll ruin your technique,” or they would ask me, “do you really want to make a career playing music like that?” I even received letters reproaching me for playing “blasphemous music.”
What a colourful, active, lively time it was! People in those days weren’t indifferent, “lukewarm.” Nowadays it seems you can perform just anything, however new and peculiar. Nothing shakes people in the same way.
Nature, air, movement
LP: I well remember how I first came into contact with your music. It was sometime in the early 1970s. I was busy doing something at home and listening to the radio. The music they were playing soon caught my attention – so much so that I really sat down to listen. Right then and there I phoned you to ask whether you could possibly compose something for my next concert. And the result was the third sonata.
UM: Oh, that’s right, I remember now. Then came the fourth sonata, which I also dedicated to you.
LP: The very first thing that springs to mind in connection with your music – I don’t know how you feel about it – is nature.
UM: I suppose it must be. It’s obvious, I live surrounded by it. But this shouldn’t be taken too narrowly, of course. Remember that I grew up in what at the time we called modernism, but which was really neoclassicism. Then I studied dodecaphonic techniques and serialism in Germany… really and truly, I have run through the whole range of styles that have been ‘in’ and ‘out’ in Europe from the 1950s onwards. But I have never adopted any of them as such.
I, too, have something of a reputation as a musical constructor, but in actual fact intuition is of the utmost importance to me. Without it, I am lost.
Selected Discography
Liisa Pohjola’s recordings mostly date from the vinyl era, and only a few of them have been reproduced on CD. Because these recordings are of great importance as documents of Finnish piano music and the Finnish art of interpretation, we decided to include a selection of them.
From Finnish Music Quarterly magazine 2/1997
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