The Finnish music world has been shocked by the sudden death of Eriikka Maalismaa, a former concertmaster of the Helsinki Philharmonic, at the age of 44. Eriika was more than just a leader og orchestras. She was a pioneer of new music and a campaigner for social justice. Although she sometimes freelanced with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, she was little known oloutside Finland. But within that country she was looked up to as a beacon of musicality, intelligence and progress.

Here is an insightful tribute by Aleksi Barrière, son of the late Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho and of the French composer Jean-Baptiste Barrière. Aleksi, a writer and stage director, worked with Eriika on a number of productions. Read on:

There once was a violinist, ERIIKKA MAALISMAA (1980-2024), who in Finland and beyond was an inspiration to many in defining what musicianship is in the contemporary world. She created a career that felt like a curated whole, through initiatives and collaborations, and also by somehow consistently showing up in places where exciting music was being made. Versatility, independence, craftswomanship, but also character and humor are some of the words that have been used to describe her.

Our paths crossed a few times on stage, but the last occurrence will never stop being memorable to me: four months ago we did this show intertwining Davies' "Eight Songs for a Mad King" and Messiaen's "Quartet for the End of Time," and so, as the former work demands, a rather important part of the ending was Eriikka's violin being taken from her hands and violently smashed to pieces.

But in this version, after everyone else had left the stage, Eriikka recovered/resurrected the broken violin to perform Messiaen's final meditation on Jesus' immortality, eight minutes of post-apocalyptic luminescence. It felt like music could redeem something after all, and in that instant she was music incarnate. Theatrics were over, Eriikka stood in the dark and deserted church where this was taking place, and simply made us experience the power and timelessness of a floating, chiseled musical line over the discrete, grounding chords Kirill Kozlovski played on the piano.