Oliver Triendl

Although Toivo Kuula was one of the few pupils taught by Sibelius, he never really had to struggle to emerge from his teacher’s shadow into his own independent light. Kuula originally had wanted to be a violinist and continued to favour the violin even after the playing of this instrument had receded into the background and his activities as a composer had come to occupy the foreground. The Sonata Movement of 1906 already attests to the composer’s remarkable mastery in the design of musical processes. The essential difference between this piece and the Violin Sonata Op. 1 composed during the following year, when Kuula was a student in Helsinki, is that in the latter work his own voice is present from the very beginning.

The double bass is an instrument that can all too often be misunderstood and is often lightly dismissed: due to its impressive size it is assumed that the instrument is only capable of ponderous, heavy, grumpy sounds. The fact that there is not a grain of truth in either of these urban myths is borne out by the double bass sonatas on the present album and the soloist, Romanian double bassist Petru Iuga: music is innate to this instrument that is anything but cumbersome; it is in fact capable of producing sensuous melodies, virtuoso forms of expression suit it just as well as contemplative ones do, and its spectrum ranges from the deepest gruff growl to the brightest, most heartfelt burst of laughter…