Je sens un deuxième coeur (2003)
(Je sens un deuxieme coeur)

The five-movement trio “I feel a second heart” for viola (Dale Hikawa Silverman), cello (Anssi Karttunen), and piano (Emanuel Ax) by Saariaho revealed all these virtues and abilities in perhaps the most impressive way: suggestive music with a latent program, at its high-point a musical version of the listening of an expectant mother for sounds within herself. The rhythmic postponement, interlocking polyphony, and musically picturesque effects were as magnificent in their performance as in their composition.

The Finnish composer works with many harmonious nuances and skillfully makes use of the deeper string sound stolen from the violin. Ax at the piano again gave the work clear contours. The excellent solo viola player, Dale Hikawa Silverman, harmonized perfectly with the Finnish cellist Anssi Karttunen.

To those of us rooting for classical music to build a thriving future upon its storied history, nothing is more exciting than the introduction of a startling new work. So after a full week of attending concerts and operas in New York...what lingers is the premiere of Kaija Saariaho's "Je Sens un Deuxieme Coeur," a wonderfully strange work for viola, cello and piano that seemed monumental despite lasting only 15 minutes. The work was commissioned by Carnegie Hall for the pianist Emanuel Ax as part of his Perspectives series this season...In the last few years of his life Debussy planned a series of six sonatas for diverse instruments. He completed three. Why not commission composers to write, in a sense, the missing ones?...Choosing the Finnish-born Saariaho, a longtime Paris resident and one of the most distinctive composers of the day, was an inspired idea. Her intention in this five-movement work - the title translates as "I Feel a Second Heart" - was to capture in music the quality of forces moving in close proximity. In the second of four movements she conveys physical violence of forces in motion. But in the last movement the forces in close proximity are the beating hearts of a mother and her unborn child. Yet the music does not strain to make the imagery explicit. An astute and ingenious composer, Saariaho in the end became engrossed with purely musical ideas: instrumental energy in the violent movements, a color study in the murky and undulant third movement, the skittish, out-of-sync and slowly pulsating rhythms in the final movement. As usual her harmonic language is haunting and original. Eerie cluster chords in the piano and astringent sustained harmonies in the strings seem conceived to make you think, "Oh, how curious," not "My, how beautiful." The distinguished performers - Ax, the violist Paul Neubauer and the cellist Fred Sherry - played as if they knew they were introducing something significant.