Guitar
SKU:
FG.55011-071-7
Hommage to Paul
Klee. Composed by Kai
Nieminen. Fennica Gehrman
#55011-071-7. Published
by Fennica Gehrman
(FG.55011-071-7).
ISBN
9790550110717.
Comp
leted in Karstula,
Finland during late July
2010, this carefully
structured, but also
free-ranging work is
drawn from ideas for a
much earlier work in four
movements, Fantasy dating
from the 1980s.
Kai
Nieminen has been for a
long time an admirer of
the work of artist Paul
Klee (1879-1940), and the
solo presented in its
final form here is
influenced by the
painting Dances caused by
Fear or as it is often
refered to Dancing from
Fear painted towards the
end of Klee's life in
Bern, 1938.
Having
left Germany for
Switzerland in December
1933, Klee's later works
were often full of signs
and lines, very often
represented in black,
depicting human figures
or various objects
against a variety of
coloured backgrounds, in
the case of this painting
of a brownish hue. This
development in his
painting style and
technique is felt by some
to be an effect perhaps
of his long-term illness,
systemic sclerosis, but
in the case of Dances
caused by Fear there is
suggested an atmosphere
of panic and terror, an
attempt to escape from
horrors to come (World
War II), represented in
the violent movement of
the arms and legs of the
figures, and the dark,
indeed brooding nature of
the colours.
In Kai
Nieminen's guitar work
Images of Fear, there is
only a very brief passage
of calm at the very
beginning, after which
come three main connected
sections in which a wide
range of musically
unsettling ideas emerge
one by one, making use of
the tritone, minor
seconds, glissandos,
tamboura, campanella,
etc. The third and final
section incorporates the
grouping of 5
sixteenth-notes, to give
an uneasy feeling to the
music, with a short
haunting and pleading
five-note phrase
(Cantando) heard
immediately following
this passage, before the
work ends with further
glissandos, and distant
and diminishing
harmonics.
As with
Kai Nieminen's other
guitar works, the use of
'orchestral colour' is
vital to the performance,
and passages suggestive
of for example brass,
strings, woodwind, etc.,
should be taken into
account and played with
suitably considered
contrast of tone.
John Mills.
