Olli Kortekangas’s Migrations touches the heart

The recent BIS CD including Olli Kortekangas’s Migrations (a commission from the Minnesota Orchestra and Osmo Vänskä) has received enthusiastic reviews. The FMQ magazine writes that “Migrations is a deeply impressive cantata…

There’s a strong Finnish presence in the Minnesota area, and for his texts Kortekangas turned to the poetry of Sheila Packa, a Minnesotan with family roots in western Finland. Migrations, 25 minutes long, is cast in four movements for voice(s) and orchestra (mostly: in one the chorus sings a cappella) linked by three orchestral interludes for orchestra, with concertante roles for clarinet, horn and cello – instruments with a singing nature…

That’s in line with the predominantly lyrical character of the work as a whole. Packa’s poetry deals with the dislocation that migration brings, but Kortekangas’s music also hints at the epoch shift that comes with a permanent change of country: there’s a sense of scale behind the autumnal colours, and an anguish which occasionally breaks through the elegiac surface, rising to a thrilling climax in the closing bars.

Migrations must have caused many in its initial audiences to reflect upon their own origins, and it retains its ability to touch the heart in this recording.” http://www.fmq.fi/2017/05/minnesotan-memories-of-migration/