Live recording of the premiere performance in Arvo Pärt Centre, Estonia, on 29 Sept. 2019.
Performed by Katja Vepsäläinen, soprano, and Cecilia Oinas, piano.
- Pumpulia ja harsoja (Lint and Veil)
- Kohta sataa ensilumen (First Snow)
- Pilvisenä syyspäivänä (On a Cloudy Autumn Day)
Songs of the Northeastern Wind (2018) is a song cycle of three songs on poems by Mikko Lauronen for female voice and piano. Its composing process got started during an experimental multidisciplinary art project, in which the participating artists from different fields gave the material they created for each other for free development. Alastalo got inspired by the Lauronen's poems and decided to compose songs based on them.
The song cycle has got its inspiration from autumn. The darkling season is treated as a metaphor, mindset, and soul landscape. The tone of the songs is nostalgic and melancholic, but their expression reaches also melodramatic and furious registers.