I Can Hear Northern Lights

SKU: FG.55011-484-5

ISBN 9790550114845.

In January 1999, Nieminen worked with his oboe piece Elegy for Agatha. The work kept running through his mind. Its musically intimate and intriguing setting seemed to include sufficient elements for explicating a bigger whole. The poem by Hannele Huovi was the inspiration of the sequel: Kuulen virtaavaa valoa ja se on pimeys (I can here streaming light and it is darkness).
In his work, Nieminen also looks back on his days in military service. The mental pictures created decades ago on guard during winter frost amid silence combined with Huovi's poem took a musical shape. I Hear Streaming Light (1999) for the String Quartet was created out of these ideas, which together with Elegy for Agatha constitute a whole called I Can Hear Northern Lights. All musical material and melodic themes of the string quartet piece originate from Elegy for Agatha but they do not appear in their original forms.