Franco Abbiati Prize for Best Italian Premiere

We are very honored to announce that Italy’s National Association of Music Critics has awarded Pascal Dusapin’s Medeamaterial (Teatro Comunale di Bologna) the prestigious Franco Abbiati Prize for the best Italian Premiere of 2017.

Piia Komsi, who performed the titular role Medea, has previously received outstanding reviews:
Excellent International Reviews for Finnish Coloratura Soprano Piia Komsi

Photograph (c) Rocco Casaluci

As part of Bologna Modern 2017, the contemporary music theatre Medeamaterial – by French composer Pascal Dusapin and with libretto by the German poet, writer and dramatist Heiner Müller, was combined with the 1775 one-act play Medea by Georg Benda.

The Italian premiere took place at the Teatro Comunale di Bologna, October 11th – 12th, 2017

MEDEAMATERIAL by Pascal Dusapin
Opera libretto by Heiner Mueller (1992) for soprano, voice quartet, chorus and orchestra

Medea: Piia Komsi
Jason: Paul Suter

Quartetto vocale
Gabriella Costa, soprano
Sabina Martin, soprano
Katarzyna Otczyk, mezzosoprano
Konstantin Derri, controtenore
Orchestra e Coro del Teatro Comunale di Bologna
Direttore: Marco Angius
Ideazione e regia: Pamela Hunter

BBC Radio 3 in Concert: Total Immersion Esa-Pekka Salonen

Programme available shortly after the broadcast (3/12/2018) on BBC Radio 3

Total Immersion Esa-Pekka Salonen. Thrilling music by the Finnish composer performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, conducted by fellow Finn and friend Sakari Oramo.

Recorded at the Barbican on Sunday 10th December 2017
Presented by Andrew McGregor

Esa-Pekka Salonen: Gambit (1998)
Esa-Pekka Salonen: Wing on Wing (2004)*

8.15pm
INTERVAL including an interview with Esa-Pekka Salonen

8.30pm
Esa-Pekka Salonen: Mimo II (1992) +
Esa-Pekka Salonen Salone: Karawane** (2013-14)

*Anu Komsi & Pia Komsi (sopranos)
+ Nicholas Daniel (oboe)
** BBC Symphony Chorus
BBC Symphony Orchestra and BBC Symphony Chorus
Sakari Oramo (conductor)

The concluding concert of the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s Esa-Pekka Salonen Total Immersion day at the Barbican Hall on December 10th 2017 was devoted to Salonen’s striking orchestral music. ‘Wing on Wing’, inspired by the striking architecture of Los Angeles’s Disney Hall, weaves soprano voices with electronics, the sounds of fish, and the voice of architect Frank O Gehry. While ‘Karawane’ sets a Dadaist text by Hugo Ball for which the BBC Symphony Chorus joined the orchestra. Prepare for a sound-world sensuous, beguiling and often unashamedly beautiful.

Great reviews for Total Immersion: Esa-Pekka Salonen, Barbican

BBC Symphony Orchestra – Total Immersion: Esa-Pekka Salonen
Anu Komsi & Piia Komsi, BBC Singers, Nicholas Chalmers, Nicholas Daniel, Sakari Oramo
Sunday, December 10, 2017 Milton Court Concert Hall & Barbican Hall, London
“Wing on Wing, composed for the opening of Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, is a huge, celebratory piece that deserves to survive beyond its original purpose thanks to its big imagination and the chance it offered to hear Anu and Piia Komsi, the Finnish high-wire soprano twins.”  – Richard Fairman, Financial Times Financial Times – Salonen Total Immersion review – 11 December 2017

“Attractive woodwind riffs bubble up through the curtain-raiser Gambit, and the writing for the phenomenal Komsi twins, Anu (Mrs Oramo) and Piia in Wing on Wing (pictured above with Oramo and the BBCSO), previously heard performing the work in the same hall over a decade ago, never repeats the opening siren-like formula for them as they move around the hall. It would be hard to imagine this half-hour extravaganza without them; anyone resistant to the confrontational glamour of the piece would still have to make obeisance to their luminous blend of the vocal and the instrumental,” – David Nice, The Arts Desk
The Arts Desk – Salonen Total Immersion concert review – 11 December 2017

“On a much larger scale, his half-hour Wing on Wing (2004) expands this approach. He wrote it for the opening of Frank Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall in LA, a wildly virtuosic piece of statement architecture matched by the Californian confidence of Salonen’s music. The huge orchestra comes with two coloratura sopranos (sisters Anu and Piia Komsi; Anu is married to Sakari Oramo), the electronically sampled voice of Gehry, more drawl than words, and the ‘song’ of the plainfin midshipman, a remarkably ugly fish that thrives in that part of the ocean. The title refers to the maximum area of sail on a boat, which in turn refers to a particular view of the Disney Hall. The Komsi sisters (who sang in the world and UK premieres) were in stratospheric voice and had their work cut out legging it to the uppermost parts of the auditorium for vocalise effects (with results similar to Holst’s Planets Suite), and the piece ranges from a monolithic solidity on a par with ‘The Great Gate of Kiev’ to a superbly realised impressionism so vaporous as to re-site La mer in the Pacific. Salonen’s programme note was useful but you got the gist of the piece without it. It is action-packed music, completely justifying the extravagant forces and played and conducted with irresistible can-do bravura.” – Peter Reed, Classical Source

New CD: Zoltán Jeney: Wohin

New recording of Wohin, by Zoltán Jeney. 

Gábor Csalog (piano), György Déri (cello), Piia Komsi (soprano)
MR Symphony Orchestra and MR Choir, Krulik String Quartet, MR Symphony Orchestra, Zoltán Kocsis

Jeney: Songs of Innocence and Experience
Pia Komsi (soprano)

Available at Presto Classical

Bologna Modern 2017: Medea / Medeamaterial

As part of Bologna Modern 2017, the contemporary music theatre Medeamaterial – by French composer Pascal Dusapin and with libretto by the German poet, writer and dramatist Heiner Müller, is combined with the 1775 one-act play Medea by Georg Benda.

Medea by Evelyn de Morgan, 1889

Teatro Comunale di Bologna
October 11th – 12th, 2017 at 8:00 pm – TICKETS ONLINE

MEDEA
by Georg Benda
Melodrama in one act – libretto by Wilhelm Gotter | for actors and orchestra

MEDEAMATERIAL
by Pascal Dusapin
Opera libretto by Heiner Mueller (1992) for soprano, voice quartet, chorus and orchestra

BENDA

Medea
Salome Kammer
Jason
Paul Suter

DUSAPIN

Medea
Piia Komsi
Jason
Paul Suter

Quartetto vocale
Gabriella Costa, soprano
Sabina Martin, soprano
Katarzyna Otczyk, mezzosoprano
Konstantin Derri, controtenore

Orchestra e Coro del Teatro Comunale di Bologna
Direttore
Marco Angius
Ideazione e regia
Pamela Hunter

New York: Great Reviews for Wing on Wing

” (..) their parts were sung with voluptuous colorings by the sisters Anu and Piia Komsi.” New York Times
“Sister sopranos Anu and Piia Komsi were extraordinary in the stratospheric vocal parts, starting onstage and reappearing in other spots around the hall.” New York Classical Review

May 19th: Premiere with New York Philharmonic

Coming soon: The New York premiere of Esa-Pekka Salonen’sWing on Wing, with sopranos Piia Komsi and Anu Komsi and the New York Philharmonic!

Wing on Wing is included in the program of ‘Alan Gilbert’s Farewell Concerts’, titled ‘Kavakos Plays Brahms’.

There will be three performances on the stage of the David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center:

Friday, May 19th, Saturday, May 20th, and Tuesday, May 23rd.

New York Philharmonic

Hetta Music Festival: World Premiere by Tapio Tuomela

Tapio Tuomela: Yoik& Fishing Scene, text in tunturisaame, Finnish, Swedish

Soprano: Piia Komsi
Borea-kvartetti

16/4/2017

Rave Reviews for Sirens Cycle

World Premiere: Péter Eötvös’ The Sirens Cycle, Wigmore Hall London
Piia Komsi performing with the the Calder Quartet, October 1st, 2016

“And the outstanding soprano Piia Komsi, taking over from Barbara Hannigan, was equal to its extreme demands, smoothly switching between English, ancient Greek and German.” – Hannah Nepil, Financial Times

“Most of all, though, the whole 40-minute work sets a fearsome test for any coloratura soprano, and Komsi passed it superbly, meeting every challenge with real operatic brilliance.” – Andrew Clements, The Guardian

“Komsi’s voice is phenomenal, capable of extremes of pitch and textures beyond the range of most, combined with extraordinarily crisp articulation. Her voice is almost superhumanly elastic, her diction precise even in phrases as convoluted as those thrown at her by Joyce and Eötvös.” – Anne Ozorio,  Opera Today

“The extraordinarily demanding vocals were taken on superbly by Piia Komsi (..) at short notice, following the withdrawal of Barbara Hannigan. Komsi was amazing.” – Amanda-Jane Doran, Classical Source

World Premiere: Piia Komsi and Calder Quartet: The Siren’s Cycle by Peter Eötvös

Wigmore Hall, London, Saturday 1 October 2016 7:30PM

“Soprano Piia Komsi, known for her daring musicality and highly expressive performances, is celebrated around the world for her interpretations of contemporary repertoire. She joins the Calder Quartet, winner of the 2014 Avery Fisher Career Grant, for the world première of The SIRENS CYCLE by Peter Eötvös.

The Hungarian composer’s new score for Wigmore Hall explores the full range of Hannigan’s striking coloratura voice. The programme opens with Korrespondenz, a series of three vivid ‘scenes’ for string quartet completed in 1993.”

Event site