Kaija Saariaho Only the Sound Remains, Dutch National Opera, Muziektheater, Amsterdam

Extract

Only the Sound Remains consists of two stories of supernatural encounters. A monk, praying for the soul of a deceased general, meets the latter's ghost, attracted by the sounds of the lute used in the monk's ritual. A fisherman finds the feather mantle belonging to a Tennin, an angelic spirit, who pleads with him to return the item, which he only does after she performs a celestial dance; thus, the chorus tells us, ‘was the dance of pleasure, Suruga dancing, brought to the sacred east’. Both encounters are evanescent: the ghost of the general is visited by memories of terrible battles and disappears back into the spirit world; the Tennin's dance is an announcement of spring, as the Tennin herself disperses into the mists that obscure mount Fuji. In both stories, the spiritual is a manifestation of something virtual, relating artistic forms to worlds not of, yet touching on, the everyday. The sounds of the lute, which used to belong to the general, are a conduit to deep memory; the dance taught by the Tennin connects humans to the inhuman workings of nature.