Mikko Heiniö & Juha Siltanen

The music of Mikko Heiniö (born 1948) is distinctively Post-Modernist, his idiom freely employing strictly delimited musical material in a free-tonal environment and incorporating musical influences from a variety of sources.  Appropriate colour is bestowed on his operas, for instance, by alluding to the period in which the action is set (e.g. the Middle Ages) or, as in the case of Eerik XIV (2011), using a musical theme that was actually composed by the historical figure who is the main character.  The freedom of this musical approach leads to unusual and sometimes refreshingly surprising decisions in scoring: a baritone soloist in a symphony or a choir in a piano concerto. Mikko Heiniö is also one of Finland’s leading musicologists. He was Professor of Musicology at the University of Turku from 1986 to 2005, and his literary output is equally impressive.