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Written in fRoots issue 317/318, 2009


KRAFT
Max Höjd
Texicalli TEXCD 096 (2009)

TIMO ALAKOTILA
Concerto For Free Bass Accordion And Chamber Orchestra + Concerto Grosso
Texicalli Impala IMPALA 1000

Johanna Juhola is not only an extraordinarily talented and multifaceted accordion player and composer, one of Finland’s musical leading lights, she’s also become hyperactively prolific in her writing for and playing with a slew of duo and group line-ups and the several albums a year they release between them. One is Spontaani Vire, whose considerably brilliant most recent album was reviewed earlier. Here, not even touching on the area of her award-winning tango playing with several more combos, nor her writing and playing music for the opening of the 2007 Eurovision Song Contest in Helsinki, are two more.
     Pekka Kuusisto is that rare creature, an internationally renowned young classical violin soloist (he was the first Finn to win the International Jean Sibelius Violin Competition) who’s a very fine folk fiddler (his Folk Trip CD was reviewed in fR 242/243) and also perfectly at home with jazz and the wildest of electronic, improvising and noise music.
     He and Juhola, as Kraft, are a duo of constantly inventive quirkiness. On their album Max Höjd they play not only their main instruments and electrified versions thereof, but toy piano, grand piano, harmonium and Hohner Claviola (a mouth-blown, melodica-like invention with resonant tubes, looking like a small, bent grand piano hung across the player’s chest). They’re joined by a wild Finnish rapping vocalist for one track recorded live at Helsinki harbour where, they say, “some dude passed out listening”; another trip out of Finnvox’s studio to the Helsinki outdoors, Tweed 3-Piece, is a set of three tunes learned from fellow accordion whizz Karen Tweed, “played for some puzzled tourists on top of Temppeliaukio Church”. Another, a collaboration with a pianist and bassoonist, has systems music, evolving-patterns approach. Dazzling, and far from your standard fiddle and accordion album, pleasingly uncategorisable, the whole thing has the best combination: wildness, a constant stream of surprises, an undercurrent of subtle humour and periods of calm, surging beauty.
    
     Johanna is the soloist in Concerto For Free Bass Accordion And Chamber Orchestra by JPP harmonium-driver, pianist, and composer Timo Alakotila, who is a regular collaborator with several accordionists including Maria Kalaniemi and Karen Tweed. He doesn’t play on the CD; it comprises two of his orchestral works, which show some of the same stylistic motifs as his writing for JPP, and draws on western Finnish folk music in a rich, melodic orchestral sound that sometimes reminds of Ralph Vaughan Williams, and would I imagine be categorised by classical music critics alongside RVW and other so-called ‘national romantic’ composers.
     The first of the two works on the CD, with Juhola, twists and winds without settling into a fixed time signature, the accordion blending finely with the orchestra. The second, titled Concerto Grosso, was commissioned by the Vox Artis Chamber Orchestra which plays both pieces, whose members include Frigg’s Tommi Asplund, JPP’s Mauno Järvelä and bassist Sara Puljula. It moves through developments of two folk music forms - a minuet and an expanded form of the energetic Finnish polskas Alakotila writes for JPP - then into a serene lyrical section, ending with a scampering passionate fugue. Yes, in format and medium this is orchestral classical music, but it has its roots in a non-classical tradition, its place in fRoots, and it’s beautiful.

www.texicalli.net, www.johannajuhola.net, www.myspace.com/kraftduo


© 2009 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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Kansanmusiikki-instituutti (Finland's national Folk Music Institute).

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