Suut: 1+1=3

Suut: 1+1=3 
12.2.2025  17:00
Helsinki Music Centre, Paavo

Anna-Sofia Anttonen, saxophone
Meeri Pulakka, soprano
Livia Schweizer, flute
Meriheini Luoto, violin

Meriheini Luoto (*1989): To The Moon… (2025, world premiere)
Luciano Berio (1925–2003): Sequenza I (1958/1992)
Vinko Globokar (*1934): Dos à dos (1988)
Luciano Berio: Sequenza III (1965)
Philippe Leroux (*1959): Un Lieu Verdoyant (1999)
Luciano Berio: Sequenza VIIb (1969/1993)
Rebecca Saunders (*1967): O, Yes and I (2017–18)
Meriheini Luoto: …And Back (2025, world premiere)

Suut: 1+1=3

The title of the concert suggests that when two elements come together, the result is greater than the sum of their parts.

Luciano Berio’s Sequenzas—14 solo works for different instruments—often explore polyphony, even when written for monophonic instruments. Today, we’ll hear three of these solo Sequenzas, alongside three duos and a world-premiere trio that frames the concert, opening and closing the journey. We invite you to join us on this voyage—to the moon and back. Perhaps you’ll bring something along, leave something behind, and return with something new. Enjoy the trip!

The concert is recorded by the Finnish Broadcasting Company Yle and will be aired on Yle Radio 1 channel 21st of February at 19:02.

Meriheini Luoto: To The Moon… …And Back 

The piece draws inspiration from beliefs surrounding soul birds and migratory birds. According to folklore, birds are said to bring a soul to a newborn child and carry it away at the moment of death. Migratory birds, in turn, are accustomed to long journeys, flying away for the winter — according to one 17th-century theory, even as far as the moon. Perhaps soul birds, too, sometimes set their course toward the moon?

This work was created in collaboration between Luoto and Suut Ensemble, drawing further inspiration from Feodor Pratšu’s song Musta lintu. The piece also features the pärrä, an instrument believed to be one of the world’s oldest, historically used as a tool for connecting with the spirit world. Now, the pärrä helps launch the first flutter of the journey, allowing us to imagine ourselves among the soul birds, en route to the moon.

Luciano Berio: Sequenza I

Luciano Berio’s Sequenza I for solo flute was composed in 1958 for the italian flutist Severino Gazzelloni, and it is part of a larger cycle of 14 Sequenze for different solo instruments. The flute Sequenza is celebrated for its innovation, particularly in its original use of spatial notation, a technique that represented the length of notes and rests through their physical distance on the page. This allowed flutists to navigate the complex rhythms and notation more easily and allowed them to explore the material with a different level of creative agency. However, some performers, like Gazzelloni and Aurèle Nicolet, took different liberties and interpretations of the rhythm, prompting Berio to revise the piece in 1992 into a traditional notation format, ensuring greater rhythmic precision, still aiming to keep the unpredictability of the phrases.

In the piece it is possible to hear Berio’s deep interest in sound, dynamics, and polyphony. Although the piece is monodic, Berio’s goal was to create a listening experience that evokes the presence of multiple voices, challenging the flute which was an instrument he considered “the least polyphonic.” The sudden shifts in dynamics, character, and material within the piece require the flutist to explore a form of virtuosity that pushes the boundaries of the very concept of ‘monody’, giving life to a Sequenza that already embodies Berio’s ongoing commitment to expanding musical limits and challenging performers.

Vinko Globokar: Dos a Dos 

Vinko Globokar is a Slovene composer and trombonist renowned for his experimental and boundary-pushing approach to music. After moving to Ljubljana in 1947, he studied at the local conservatory before continuing his education at the Paris Conservatoire. In the 1960s, he further refined his compositional skills under the guidance of Leibowitz and Berio.

Globokar’s music is known for its unconventional techniques, spontaneity, and a strong emphasis on improvisation, influenced also from his background in jazz . For him, music must engage critically with contemporary society, often exploring profound themes such as exile, conflict, and the human condition. Works like Les émigrés (1986), L’Exil (2012-2014), and L’Armonia Drammatica (1987-1990) reflect his deep concern with migration and human suffering, addressing issues that resonate well beyond the concert hall.

Another characteristic  of Globokar’s work is his ability to blend improvisation with theatrical elements, creating a fusion of music and drama. Pieces such as Kaktus unter Strom (1999), Der Engel der Geschichte (2000-2004), and Das Orchester (1974) integrate staged actions with music, challenging traditional concert formats and intensifying the emotional impact of the performance.

Dos á Dos exemplifies this fusion of music and theater, typical of his language. Dos á Dos, which translates to “back to back”, is a conversation, a fight, or even a love declaration between two performers. Placed back to back, the two voices navigate a complex relationship ‘pushing and pulling’ each other. How will this love and hate story end?

Luciano Berio: Sequenza III

According to Luciano Berio, the human voice always refers beyond itself, always signifies something and creates a vast array of associations. This is particularly evident in Berio’s solo work Sequenza III (1965) for the female voice. The piece combines a wide range of vocal behaviour from extended vocal techniques to everyday sounds, while still also communicating with lines of delicate and expressive singing. Markus Kutter’s poem has been transformed into musical units in Berio’s treatment. The text is broken down into individual sounds, syllables and words, which gradually reveal themselves as the piece progresses: 

Give me a few words for a woman
to sing a truth allowing us
to build a house without worrying before night comes

Berio has described the work as a dramatic essay, in which the so-called story is the relationship between the performer and their voice. For the performer, Sequenza III is an exploration of the boundaries of the voice, seeking expressive possibilities and freedom from conventional singing techniques. A wide range of extreme emotional states of life is distilled in it, forming the comic and tragic dimensions of the performance, which can at the same time be virtuosic and fragile. The impact of the work lies in its multidimensionality and intensity, as well as in the performer’s freedom to find associations and contradictions within the characters suggested by the notation. Because of this, the interpretation holds nearly limitless possibilities. Berio composed the work for his collaborator, inspirer and at the time already his former wife, the singer and composer Cathy Berberian, who had a revolutionary impact on the conventions of vocal music.

Philippe Leroux: Un lieu verdoyant

The French composer Philippe Leroux dedicated his composition Un lieu verdoyant (A verdant place, 1999) to the memory of the spectral music legend Gérard Grisey. Leroux’s friend and important role model had passed away the year before the composition was written. Grisey’s spouse, mezzo-soprano Mireille Deguy, performed the world premiere of the piece. Leroux based the text of Un lieu verdoyant on the Book of Lamentations from the Bible, in which the violence of death is addressed powerfully, yet at the same time, there are reminders of hope. In the piece, which operates through expansion and densification, the gestures alternate between a descending movement associated with death and an ascending movement that connects with life and hope. The sliding and microtonal sounds are woven together as continuities of pitch, energy and gestures: each section grows out of the previous one and links to it in various ways, like a natural organic process.

Luciano Berio: Sequenza VIIb

Luciano Berio’s Sequenza VII, originally composed for oboe in 1969, was later adapted in 1993 for soprano saxophone under the title Sequenza VIIb. The saxophone version was arranged by Claude Delangle and remains faithful to the original piece, which was dedicated to and composed in close collaboration with oboist Heinz Holliger. The work features an abundance of sounds produced using extended techniques, and its notation deviates from traditional methods: instead of conventional rhythmic values, the measures are marked in seconds with decimal precision. According to Berio, performing the Sequenzas requires not only technical mastery of the instrument but also a virtuosity of the mind.

A defining characteristic of the composition is the sustained B natural, which resonates continuously from beginning to end. In today’s performance, this tone will be heard from Meriheini Luoto’s violin, providing a subtle background resonance. Around this hidden drone, the saxophonist plays, frolics, pecks, sings, and experiments with a wide dynamic range. The piece employs six different fingerings for producing the note B natural, allowing the same pitch to be heard in multiple tonal colors.

The collaboration between the instrumentalist and the composer played a crucial role in shaping the composition. Alongside the published score, an additional instruction sheet provides guidance on various techniques, such as multiphonic and trill fingerings, which greatly assist in rehearsing the piece. Every musician who performs Sequenza VIIb makes their own interpretative choices and discoveries, developing personalized ways to bring out the piece’s rich and diverse sonic palette.

Rebecca Saunders: O Yes & I

O Yes & I by Rebecca Saunders is a duo for soprano and bass flute, part of Yes (2017), a large-scale (82 minutes) spatialized performance work inspired by Molly Bloom’s monologue from James Joyce’s Ulysses. This soliloquy explores through a stream of consciousness Molly’s sexual independence and the turmoil in her relationship with Leopold Bloom, and it is a monologue that challenges societal expectations and uncovers the inner life of a complex female character. In O Yes & I, fragments of Molly’s monologue emerge through the soprano and bass flute parts, while moments of sweetness and harshness coexist, intertwining in a dynamic and complex dialogue where different forces clash and merge together.

Saunders’ music often springs from silence, with sounds beginning “from nothing.” This duality and  interplay between silence and abrupt, explosive gestures creates a charged tension that represents both stillness and aggression, mirroring Joyce’s intense and provocative prose.

“Yes. Yes once O.
The dear dead beyondre, dear dead.
Call, close my eyes. Breath breath, my lips.
Rose, rose and close my eyes.
My heart Oh and my eyes, oer ere.
Kiss kiss my eyes.
Sweet song. Hate that istsberg, comes quite nearly me! Yes! Shit. No, I never, quite nearly only! No more. Quite tricky trick steady shit weeping Oh.
Weeping tone once in the dear dead day, sweet song. The world, (oh weeping).”
[…]

The piece was commissioned for soprano Juliet Fraser and bass flutist Helen Bledsoe for the Louth Contemporary Music Festival’s The Book of Hours, O Yes & I.

Anna-Sofia Anttonen is a curious saxophonist and artist from Helsinki, particularly interested in contemporary music and various points of intersection. She has studied at the Sibelius Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki as well as at the Conservatory of the Balearic Islands. Anttonen enjoys exploring the extended possibilities of her instrument and musical performance and has premiered works by numerous composers.

She composes experimental music in the Kukkapilli project, which combines ceramics and sound art, as well as with the electroacoustic ensemble Tektonik. Anttonen is a member of Uusinta Ensemble, Saxtronauts, and Kaaos Ensemble. In addition, she works in a variety of roles as a soloist, orchestral musician, theater musician, and chamber musician. She has performed at festivals such as October New Music, Musica Nova, Time of Music, rainy days, Flow, and the Helsinki Festival. Her artistic work has been supported by Alfred Kordelin Foundation, MES, Finnish Cultural Foundation and Arts Promotion Centre Finland.

Soprano Meeri Pulakka‘s versatile repertoire spans from baroque to contemporary music. She is often praised for her stylish, musical, and moving interpretations in chamber music, solo works, and opera. Pulakka has performed as a soloist with several Finnish orchestras and ensembles, and at numerous contemporary music events, such as the Kallio Contemporary Music Days, Uuden Musiikin Lokakuu, Musica nova Helsinki, the Nuovi Spazi Musicali festival, and the Tulkinnanvaraista concert series. Pulakka graduated with a Master’s degree in music from the Sibelius Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki and the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. She gave her debut concert focusing on contemporary vocal music in 2019 as part of the Winter Young Artists concert series at the Helsinki Music Centre. In the fall of 2024, she began her doctoral studies in music with a focus on artistic research at the Sibelius Academy. Pulakka’s work has recently been supported by the Finnish Cultural Foundation, the Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation, and the Finnish Music Foundation.

Livia Schweizer (b. 1994) is a flutist, improviser, and educator based in Helsinki. Known for her interest in improvisation and unconventional music notation, she uses these tools to bring together artists from various cultural and generational backgrounds. Livia graduated from the conservatory of Livorno, studying under Mauro Rossi, and later moved to Finland to further her education. She studied at OAMK in Oulu during an Erasmus program and later continued her studies at the Sibelius Academy under Mikael Helasvuo.

In Helsinki, Livia has participated in contemporary music and interdisciplinary projects with ensembles like Nyky-ensemble, Korvat Auki, UMUU-ensemble, and Eloa ry. She has performed at numerous festivals, including Flow Festival, Helsingin Juhlaviikot, UNM Festival, and Musica Nova, and has taken her music to international stages like Jauna Muzika (Lithuania) and METRIC (Germany). Livia is a member of the European Composer Improvisers Orchestra and she is also a co-founder of the Earth Ears Ensemble, dedicated to performing works by lesser-known composers.

In addition to her work in contemporary music, Livia is an active orchestra player, and she has performed with the Jyväskylä Sinfonia, Pori Sinfonietta, Avanti!, Tapiola Sinfonietta and as a substitute flutist with the Turku Philharmonic Orchestra and Lahti Symphony Orchestra.

Livia holds a master’s degree in flute and pedagogy from the Sibelius Academy and currently teaches at the International School of Music Finland. Currently she is doing her doctoral studies at the MuTri doctoral school, focusing on how graphic and text-based scores can foster interdisciplinary and intercultural dialogue in contemporary music.

Finnish Cultural Foundation
The Finnish Music Foundation
Helsinki Music Centre Foundation
Alfred Kordelin Foundation
Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation