Joonas Ahonen

​Ives’s Concord Sonata often requires its performer to despatch inhuman quantities of notes at superhuman speed, but Ahonen scoops them up like a kid building sandcastles, with no loss of clarity or of dynamic or rhythmic control.

“Somehow there has to be something new, and somehow the composer has to challenge himself. But employing completely new means of expression or playing around with the concept of art are not in themselves necessary for creating meaningful art.” So says composer Lauri Kilpiö, whose new piano concerto Shades of Light traces a broad arc from tradition to the present day, acknowledging both Beethoven and the aesthetics of noise.