for string quartet, duration c. 27′
Commissioned by Uusinta Ensemble and by the Sea Lapland’s String Quartet. Dedicated to the people of Ukraine.
Premiered by Uusinta Ensemble in Turku Guitar Festival 25.11.2022
Premiered by Sea Lapland’s String Quartet in October 2023
Uusinta Ensemble, Oberstdorf Internationales festival forum für neue musik, 25.3.2023
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Acoustics fascinate and inspire me. The same music sounds different in different spaces and the space itself creates different atmospheres. What kind of feeling do you get from music that is played in a completely dry and non-resonant space? And what kind of feeling creates music that is played in a big, reverberant cathedral-like space, where things get mixed-up and noisy? If the music in these two spaces is the same and the only difference is the acoustics, how differently do we experience the music?
In (Bad) Dreams come true I try to create those different acoustical spaces without changing the acoustics of the actual concert hall; I compose those acoustics, or illusions of them, inside the music. The dramaturgy of the piece grows from the relationship between the musical material and the acoustics related to it, and from the changes in these.
The piece moves in a kind of dream-like state, where the cuts between different spaces, acoustics and atmospheres are sometimes very rigid, sometimes floating and sometimes overlapping each other.
When I was composing this piece, the war in Europe started. The shock of it and the news from the battles influenced a lot in the piece and the material used in it. I was thinking what kinds of dreams of future people in Ukraine might have had before the war and how it all was crushed overnight and changed into a living nightmare. The fear and suspension of the present, memories of the past and dreams of the future all came part of the piece. (Bad) Dreams come true is dedicated to the people of Ukraine.