Anssi Karttunen

Over the decades, numerous musicians and ensembles around the world have performed the music of Kaija Saariaho. Without long-term relationships with trusted interpreters, the Finnish composer’s music would have travelled quite a different path.

The Finnish cellist Anssi Karttunen is equally at home in a Romantic concerto as in music of the Baroque or the present day. When this article was published, he had just premiered Magnus Lindberg’s Cello Concerto in Paris, on 6 May 1999. He here describes how working with composers of his own day and age can help the performer to enter into the minds of composers who lived and died long ago.