Painting: Constance Tenvik

Premiered in Kunsthalle Helsinki, 7.2.2026.

Bacchanal of Hörselberg is an electroacoustic installation by Walter Sallinen and Kaj Mäki-Ullakko for chamber orchestra, live electronics and speakers. The was performed by the chamber orchestra Avanti! with a loudspeaker set (10 musicians, 12 speakers, all spread around the building).

In the work, an acoustic orchestra transforms into a polyphonic live sampler, which triggers a sonic tissue that reacts to the playing and comments on itself on top of the traditional orchestral playing. During the performance, the audience is free to move around the exhibition spaces of the Kunsthalle.

The name of the work refers to the Venus Cave in Linderhof Castle Park, built by the Bavarian King Ludwig II (1845-1886). The cave, with its ostentatious design, artificial lake, stalactites and shiny surfaces, was intended to imitate the first act of Richard Wagner’s opera Tannhäuser.

In Bacchanal of Hörselberg, the pseudo Wagnerian music played by the orchestra – inspired by the exuberance and unintentional kitsch spirit of Venus Cave – is given a “coating” that spreads out through the speakers. By confronting the orchestra with its own alter ego, the work seeks to illuminate the contemporary connotations and essence of classical orchestral music.

Pictures: Anna-Maria Viksten