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August 1995 saw the unveiling of a new violin concerto (and a new understanding of what a concerto could be) by the Finnish composer Kaja Saariaho. The piece, Graal th茅芒tre, was performed by Gidon Kremer under the baton of Esa-Pekka Salonen at the 麻豆官网首页入口 Proms.

Saariaho's main inspiration was a book by the French writers Florence Delay and Jacques Roubaud, about King Arthur and his Knights of the Grail: Gawain, Lancelot and Galahad. There are other influences, too: Saariaho overheard Gidon Kremer practising Beethoven鈥檚 Violin Concerto and her imagination went into overdrive. She set to work on the score 鈥� and then came news that the Polish composer Witold Lutos艂awski had passed away, and somehow his defiant spirit found its way into this music, too.

There鈥檚 nothing quite like the mysterious sonic imagination of Kaija Saariaho. She grew up in Finland where her father worked in the metal industry. She was the only woman in the composition class when she studied in Helsinki in the early 1970s. Eventually she was drawn south to France by the elusive riches of spectralism and the sounds emerging from the underground electronic music laboratory of IRCAM in Paris.

Suddenly everything that Saariaho had previously heard only in her imagination became possible. All the enchanted sounds that had been in her mind since she was a child 鈥� now she could use electronics to meld with the fibrous realness of instruments and bring those sonic fantasies to life. Even when Saariaho left Paris and the electronics behind, she kept hold of her ability to conjure the uncanny.

And that鈥檚 the magic of Graal th茅芒tre. Saariaho says that the violin "is connected with a lot of frustrated illusions, longing and love". "A really interesting violinist always seems to be not only a brilliant musician," she said, "but an unusually enigmatic person at the same time.鈥� The violin was the Grail, then, moving elusively through an orchestra whose inner life teams with miraculous action, like a forest floor at night.

This is one of 100 significant musical moments explored by 麻豆官网首页入口 Radio 3鈥檚 Essential Classics as part of Our Classical Century, a 麻豆官网首页入口 season celebrating a momentous 100 years in music from 1918 to 2018. Visit bbc.co.uk/ourclassicalcentury to watch and listen to all programmes in the season.

This is an archive recording by the 麻豆官网首页入口 Symphony Orchestra with violin soloist Gidon Kremer and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen.

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