“A leap into the unknown” is how Mirka Malmi and Tiina Karakorpi describe how they came to make this disc of works not within the regular canon. “You have no preconceived idea of how they should be played, no tradition to rely on and serve as a guideline. You just have to leap.”

Other Finnish Works for Violin affords a new perspective on Finnish and Nordic violin music. The six composers featured on the disc are women, either Finnish or of Finnish descent, born in the mid-19th century. They speak out in a way that challenges the Late- or Neo-Romantic trends in repertoire for the instrument, and they do so in styles of their own manifesting musical traditions that have previously passed unnoticed – the secret garden of Western art music created by another, marginalised gender.

The six composers were recognised in their day, and many were virtuoso performers, yet histories have since “forgotten” them.

To get closer to the time and soundscape of the composers on this disc, Malmi uses metal-covered gut strings and Karakorpi a Bösendorfer grand from 1882. “This opened up a new tone world,” says Malmi. “The balance between our instruments just came naturally.” “We tried to give each piece a character of its own,” Karakorpi adds.

Most of the pieces on the disc have never before been recorded, and the printed music was difficult to find. The Other Finnish Works for Violin project has produced a published edition of the music (Fennica Gehrman, 2021) alongside the CD.

Mirka Malmi (violin, b. 1977) and Tiina Karakorpi (piano, b. 1978) have been working with music by women for a long time. The series of eight concerts Woman and the Violin (Nainen ja Viulu 2018–2020) curated by Malmi presented violin and chamber music composed by Nordic women between 1850 and 1950. It culminated in the premiere of the violin concerto Tondikt II (c. 1910–30/1) by Ida Moberg, with Malmi as the soloist.

Tiina Karakorpi has highlighted music by female composers in the Woman and the Violin concert series, as a member of such ensembles as the KAAÅS Piano Trio and as a performer at the Kokonainen festival designed to promote gender equality in art music. In 2019, she and Mirka Malmi recorded works by Finnish female composers for the Finnish Broadcasting Company (Yle), and they also collaborate closely with researchers and others in the field of music.

In addition to women’s music, Malmi has focused on the performance of contemporary music and cross-over projects. Karakorpi has conducted research into the physical aspect of performance from, among others, the gender and maternity perspectives. Malmi plays the violin in the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Karakorpi teaches the piano at the Espoo Music Institute. Both are fascinated by new, creative dialogue between past and present in the work of the musician: the way history speaks in the present day and moulds the future.