In Jenni Toikka’s short film Prelude Op. 28 no. 2, 2021, two women play the piano in turn. When one plays, the other listens. The roles change subtly. The camera slides and slips softly over the scene, blurring the transition from listening to performing.
An approximately eight-minute single-channel 16-mm film transferred to 2K, Prelude Op. 28 No. 2 is inspired by Ingmar Bergman’s iconic 1978 film, Autumn Sonata, in which a mother and a daughter play Frédéric Chopin’s Prelude in A Minor op. 28 no. 2 to each other. Bergman utilizes the prelude to conjure the specific atmosphere of Scandinavian culture in the mid-twentieth century, where feelings are broached—and controlled—only in privacy.
When the first iteration of Toikka’s film was exhibited earlier this fall, it was silent. A commission for the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra’s “Visual Overture” series, which features media art on the large screen of the Helsinki Music Centre, the piece made symbolically private emotions public. In the small artist-run space Monitoimitila O, the film feels more intimate. Its presentation is rounded out with the sheet music of Chopin’s composition. The presence of the notation adds an analytic and prescripted undertone to the footage, while making reference to questions raised about the relationship between listening and seeing in avant-garde films and experimental music of the 1960s and ’70s. One can notice when reading the notation that Toikka puts time “on hold”: The music follows Chopin’s notation for a few bars before the sound recedes into an unrecognizable echo. The “story” heard is ambiguous yet familiar; as the performers shift roles, the music picks up from where it drifted off a moment ago.
