In this Special Feature, Seppo Kimanen writes: “Through Izumi Tateno’s connections, we brought a number of excellent Japanese musicians to Kuhmo. Having Michio Mamiya as Composer of the Year in the late 1970s was such a huge success that on the back of it we were able to present a large Japan-themed festival a couple of years later.”
This visit inspired the composition of Five Finnish Folk Songs (1977), which Mamiya wrote for Tateno and cellist Erkki Rautio – who also contributed to Mamiya’s work by searching up the folk song melodies from Finnish archives. The third piece, Miero vuotti uutta kuuta (A Houseless Beggar), has also become a standard piece for cellist Yo-Yo Ma.
A different aspect of folk music from Japan and Finland is represented by kantele player Eva Alkula and koto player Tomoya Nakai. Their arrangements of folk songs from both countries introduce new viewpoints to songs that practically every Japanese and Finnish person is familiar with. One may even notice something “Finnish” in their version of the Japanese Takeda Lullaby – and something “Japanese” in the Finnish Humma.
As mentioned in Kimanen’s article, Izumi Tateno now performs only on the left hand. Takashi Yoshimatsu’s left-hand piano suite Tapiola Visions (2004), commissioned by Tateno and performed by Yumiko Oshima-Ryan, takes inspiration from the Finnish forest – the kingdom of the forest god, Tapio, in Finnish mythology. The 5/4 time signature in the first piece, Vignette in Twilight, recalls traditional rune singing.
Tapiola is also the title of Jean Sibelius’s tone poem from 1926. In this recording, the current chair of the Sibelius Society of Japan, Yuri Nitta, writes about Sibelius’s popularity in Japan and conducts another work by Sibelius: Romance in C for string orchestra.
Contemporary composer Jōji Yuasa composed his orchestral work The Midnight Sun as a homage to the Finnish national composer, Jean Sibelius. Subtle references to Sibelius’s orchestral writing can be noticed in this work.
When I met Yuasa in Tokyo, he told me that he considered the Finnish YL Male Voice Choir to be one of the best choirs in the world. Yuasa also composed 4 Seasons from Basho’s Haiku for the YL Male Voice Choir. In the first song, Yuasa combines melodious writing with timbral explorations, nodding to Buddhist chant, shōmyō, in the opening.
Another composer impressed by Finnish music is the late chair of the Japan Finland Contemporary Music Society, Toshi Ichiyanagi. In an interview, Ichiyanagi speaks about his piano concerto Finland (2012), inspired by his impressions of the country. The concerto is yet to be recorded, but Ichiyanagi’s complex piano writing can be observed in Time Sequence (1976), performed by pianist Izumi Shimura.
Several Finnish composers have been fascinated with Japan, including Pehr-Henrik Nordgren, the first Finn to study in Japan with a scholarship from the Japanese government in the early 1970s. His Kwaidan Ballads draw on Japanese ghost stories, evident in Izumi Tateno’s performance of Mimi-nashi Hoichi (Earless Hoichi).
To close our playlist on a lighter note, the Finnish group Barlast toured Japan to much acclaim in March 2023. Their light-hearted Ayham Waltz combines melodic expression with unrivalled musicianship.