Ville Raasakka’s ‘The Harvest’ will be premiered on March 16th by Klangforum Wien and the Finnish Nyky Ensemble in the Konzerthaus Wien with conductor Bas Wiegers. The composition is a direct protest against the Finnish goverment’s forest policies. Here is the info and notes about the work.
An estimated 5% of Finnish forests are old-growth forests, which have a healthy biodiversity of species. Half of these old-growth forests are protected, and the remainder is relentlessly being cut down by the government for easy profit, only to be stopped by the interventions of nature protection agencies.
The current forest machines cut trees in frightening effectivity, within seconds. I’ve used the sounds of these machines and transcribed them to the instruments. The moaning of the hydraulics, the buzzing of the saws and the beeping of the control panels are the key sound elements of the work.
The effectivity of these sounds dissolve, and sink into a state of disbelief. This music is mourning the total loss of natural biodiversity, and the resulting constant extinction of species. The clear-cut forests never regain their biodiversity again, and we are left with lifeless tree farms. Pretending an image of a forest.
Composers in the crosshairs of our attention