Elements

 

Commissioned	Ilmari Hannikainen Piano Chamber Music Competition
Publisher	Gehrmans Musikförlag
Category	Chamber music
Year	2025
Duration	7
Orchestration	piano and violin
Availability	Gehrmans Musikförlag

 

Program note

The duo Elements for violin and piano was commissioned by the Ilmari Hannikainen Piano Chamber Music Competition 2026. Elements also consists of the key elements that later grew into my violin concerto Earth Songs, which in its turn is based on the natural elements. Humankind has long tried to find ways to use and abuse the elements for personal profit. In this piece we can hear the forest’s fight against logging and chainsaws (destroying biodiversity), the fragile ozone layer protecting our world and at last water, our basis of life.

Although Finland is heavily forested, with up to 75% of its land covered by forest. However, of this forest only around 5% are classified as primeval, which means that they have obtained a great age without human interference and which is crucial for biodiversity. Despite being of great ecological importance, Finland has been losing old-growth forests at a fast pace. The forest industry moreover impacts the indigenous Saami people, as extensive logging takes place in areas used by the Saami as reindeer pastures, interfering with pasture cycles and making pasture land more and more scattered. Despite extensive national and international legislation around the rights of Saami people, the Finnish state, with state-owned forest enterprise Metsähallitus, fails to include Saami rights in forestry practices. In 2002 the Saami people of Finland together with international EJO Greenpeace started a cooperative effort to protect an area of 107,000 ha of old-growth forest in northern Finland. 

The ozone layer has again been an inspiring example how through human co-operated action and the regulations of free radical products (like sprays), we managed to restore the ozone holes we had created by the end of the 1970s. 

So far it is believed that the sea is where all life began and it is today home to up to 80% of all life on earth. We have only discovered an estimated mere 4% of its life, and with an estimate by scientists of up to 10 million species, it’s the richest ecosystem we have on earth. Phytoplankton swallow about 4 times the amount of CO2 compared to the Amazon Rainforest and life in the sea creates an estimated 50-85% of the oxygen in the world’s atmosphere. However, humans have managed to reduce many species such as tuna fish so that only 2% of the amount of it is left compared to 1970 and through bycatch millions of dolphins, whales, sharks and sea turtles also lose their life, unnecessarily. Moreover the fishing industry is responsible for over half of all plastic pollution in the oceans and this plastic pollution also kills many species. 

The very challenging piece is also an excellent exhibition of the violin’s and piano’s virtuosic and chamber musical skills.

 

Performances

2026 February 28th World Premiere by Duo Jiayi-April in Jyväskylä – More info

2026 March 1st World Premiere by Duo Lumo in Jyväskylä – More info