“The northern lights can be much more than the superficial play of colors in the sky,” observed the Finnish composer Uuno Klami. “They can be an expression of the infinite loneliness of the human spirit.”
This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” Klami’s “Northern Lights” (1948) will be one of two works inspired by the atmospheric phenomena, written by composers who would have been intimately acquainted with them.
Klami’s melancholy observation seems almost superficial alongside the life experience of Norwegian composer Geirr Tveitt. In 1970, Tveitt suffered an unfathomable loss, when fire swept through his farmhouse in Nordheimsund, destroying most of his unpublished manuscripts – 300 pieces, stored in wooden chests – fully 4/5ths of his compositional output. By extension, and not surprisingly, it also destroyed his ability to compose. He succumbed to alcoholism and died a broken man, with little hope of being remembered, in 1981.
Two of Tveitt’s piano concertos, Nos. 2 & 6, seem to have been lost forever in the conflagration. Another, No. 3, was reconstructed from a broadcast recording. Orchestral parts to the Piano Concerto No. 4 (1947) survived, along with the score to a two-piano version, and again a recording, so that the work could be restored.
The work, subtitled “Aurora Borealis,” falls into three movements – “The Northern Lights awaken above the autumn colors;” “Glittering in the winter heavens,” and “Fading away in the bright night of spring.”
I hope you’re moved to join me for “Aural Borealis,” this Sunday night at 10:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
