Finnish clarinettist Kari Kriikku says he thought New Zealand would be "an eternally warm paradise". Settling in Wellington before his North Island tour with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, he admits, "You also have a winter."
Kriikku will give us two contemporary Finnish concertos with the NZSO, conducted by his fellow-countryman Pietari Inkinen. Both works were written for him.
Friday's concert features a 2002 Concerto by Magnus Lindberg, described by Kriikku as "an exceptional talent. He's a virtuoso orchestrator and didn't stop his studies too early, like some composers."
The clarinettist describes Lindberg playing the guitar till his fingers bled, in preparation for his piece Mano a Mano. "The Clarinet Concerto," he says, "is more of a classical work. You don't have to explain anything for the player. There are some passages where I use special techniques, but on the whole it's fairly traditional."
Saturday's Puro by Jukku Tiensuu was the first concerto written for him, in 1989, and has been described as a space in which the soloist casts out ideas reflected in the sounds and gestures of the orchestra.
Puro is a piece that comes with its own tale attached. "The composer and I had many sessions together," Kriikku remembers. "First of all, Tiensuu recorded the lowest note of my clarinet very, very carefully. He then analysed the spectral qualities of what he had and used that as the source of all the orchestral harmony.
"So if the orchestra plays exceptionally well, it all sounds really pure and wonderful."
Kriikku's interests are not bound by the concert stage. He is quick to voice concerns that Finland's education system seems less and less interested in the place of music within schools.
Music schools are becoming "gradually more expensive", he says. "That's dangerous because one of our strengths has always been that anyone can come and study music. It's not only the wealthy people's hobby."
The same democratic spirit is revealed, too, in Kriikku's passion for exotic instruments from folk cultures around the world. He recently obtained a large Turkish clarinet with a metal body, which comes with "a special, rough sound and is almost impossible for classical clarinettists to play".
His interest in such alternative music inspired his new album Bizarre Bazaar, a collection of everything from klezmer to Portuguese fado played with the Tapiola Sinfonietta. An earlier disc, Humppavanti!, released on EMI's jazz label Blue Note, sees Kriikku with 12 colleagues from the Avanti! Chamber Orchestra playing "simple dance music that was the only happy thing around during World War II".
"There's always some oom-pah-pah going on in the bass somewhere," Kriikku laughs, "but the style of it is really closer to Frank Zappa."
I suggest that, in an ideal and freely funded world, his dozen Humppavanti colleagues might have been brought here to provide pre-concert jollity or assist in an encore to remember.
Somehow, though, I suspect we may still be in for some tasty piece of the bizarre from the clarinettist's musical bazaar when encore time comes around.
Performance
What: New Zealand Symphony Orchestra
Where and when: Hamilton Founders Theatre, Thursday, June 11, 8pm; Auckland Town Hall, Friday, June 12, 6.30pm, Saturday, June 13, 8pm
Clarinettist has taste for bazaar
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