Fredagar på Sibbe: Lau Nau & Matti Bye

27.03.2026 19:00 – 20:00

Standard price 25€ +order fee (from 1,50 € + 0,65 % of the order)

Student/pensioner/child 20€ +order fee (from 1,50 € + 0,65 % of the order)

Please remember that the museum card is not accepted as a means of payment!

Tickets available for purchase at the museum's ticket desk from 21 February 2026 onwards.

Matti Bye tells about the encounter with the pianokantele:

We discovered the mysterious pianokantele by chance during our visit to the exhibition on instrument builder Juhani Pohjanmies at the Sibelius Museum. Visitors were allowed to try the instrument, and from the very first tone, a door opened into an enchanting sonic world that neither of us had ever heard before. It sparked an immediate desire to keep playing – and the thought occurred to us that it would be wonderful to record the instrument.

Continuing the exploration together felt completely natural. For many years, we have collaborated by placing acoustic instruments in dialogue with modular synthesisers – the piano, the celesta, and various other sound sources have all been processed and had their voices extended into the electronic realm. In our work with the pianokantele, we tried to listen our way toward what the instrument itself wanted to express, and how its voice might resonate within a contemporary musical context. There is something dizzying and time-transcending about letting an idea that was once a radical new invention, built more than a hundred years ago, suddenly sound here and now, in this room, for new ears and with new music.

Juhani Pohjanmies (1893–1959), known until 1918 as Hjalmar Johan Aleksander Lindfors, was a Finnish composer, organist, organ builder, instrument maker, science fiction writer, and visual artist. The Sibelius Museum holds an extensive collection of instruments designed by him. The museum organized the exhibition Organ Works, Kantele, and a Touch of Sci-Fi – J. Pohjanmies from 9 October 2024 to 1 June 2025.

Pianokantele

Combining the piano and kantele was a life-long project for Pohjanmies. He had been fascinated by the kantele as a child, and early on he was interested in combining it to the claviature of a piano. The first version of the pianokantele was published in 1930 and the second in 1931. Both versions have a piano-like hammer mechanism, which makes the instrument sound nearly like an ordinary piano. The development continued, and the last, unfinished pianokantele version is from the year 1954.

In 1948, Pohjanmies added electricity to pianokantele: the clavierkantele was born. The hammers were replaced with a harpsichord-like plectrum mechanism, where the plectrums are made of leather so that they resemble a fingertip. This made the instrument sound more like a kantele than a piano. The resonance box was missing due to an electric amplifier taking care of the volume.

Of all the instruments Pohjanmies invented, the different versions of pianokantele got the most publicity in the press, and rather many were manufactured and sold.

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