Soliloque 1: Etoffe

SKU: HL.50600566

8.25x11.75x0.07 inches.

The Finnish composer Osmo Tapio Räihälä reports that he experienced a phase whilst working on his Horn Concerto in 2011 during which he had the feeling of “having landed in a deadend”. To find a remedy, he decided to develop a kind of “finger exercise” for composers, comparable to the “warming-up process of an instrumental soloist before performing”. Räihälä remembers furthermore: “Instead of writing for orchestra, I started a short solo piece for clarinet. Little did I know that I had opened a Pandora's box! I wrote 'Soliloque 1: Étoffé' in two days. Perhaps this frenzy caused the music to become restless, with quick turns – in short, a rather virtuosic etude. The clarinet seeks paths, at first without success, but obviously finding one in the end. And what about the Pandora's Box? I had given the title the number one, and during the next two years I wrote five more Soliloques, solos of six to seven minutes, for various instruments, as well as one for soprano a cappella. The title Étoffé means 'rich', or 'well rounded', but also 'fabric' or even a 'patch' - and I felt that I had patched something in my work that was broken; indeed, working on the concerto now gave me a fresh start.”.