Quarter-Tone Accordion Concerto No. 2 (2025) is composed for quarter-tone accordion and sinfonietta. The concerto is in three movements. There are meant to be (at least) shortish pauses between the movements. Each movement consist of four sections. The sections within the movements are played together without pause. The duration of the composition is approximately 27 minutes.

Quarter-Tone Accordion Concerto No. 2 (2025) was commissioned by Hetta Music Days 2025 (Tapio Tuomela, artistic director), and is dedicated to Veli Kujala. Veli Kujala has truly a great musicality. He is an extremely versatile musician, composer, improviser, pedagogue, researcher – and even a magician and inventor. The cadenza, appearing in the end of the concerto, is improvised or/and made by the soloist.

It was indescribably inspiring and huge honour to have this opportunity to compose the concerto for Veli Kujala and Arctic Philharmonic Sinfonietta conducted by Timothy Weiss. They premiered Quarter-Tone Accordion Concerto No. 2 (2025) at Hetta Music Days in Enontekiö Church on April 11, 2025.

My first composition in this genre is Velinikka (2008), Quarter-Tone Accordion Concerto No. 1. These two concertos were composed 17 years apart. Therefore, I was still relatively ‘young’ 29-year-old composer at the time of composing Velinikka (2008), but while composing Quarter-Tone Accordion Concerto No. 2 (2025) I turned 46. It goes without saying, that in 17 years, it isn’t just me that has changed, but also the world around us has changed a lot.

Velinikka (2008) was one of the first works ever composed for Veli Kujala’s quarter-tone accordion. Since then, dozens of new works have been composed for the instrument by several different composers. In addition, it is particularly crucial, that also more instruments have been built (to a few quarter-tone accordionists mainly in the European region). Over the years, step by step, new perspectives have emerged (and hopefully continue emerging in the future) on this relatively new instrument. Anyhow, it seemed to me, that after 17 years, now more than ever, it was the time to compose the second concerto for this miraculous new instrument. The composition process took me one year.

Our cooperation with Veli Kujala started in the early 2000s. Veli Kujala invented the quarter-tone accordion in 2004. The quarter-tone reed blocks were designed by Veli Kujala and built by Pigini, an accordion factory in Italy, in 2006. The most significant difference between the quarter-tone accordion and a standard chromatic button accordion with free-bass system is that the reed blocks inside the accordion are replaced with quarter-tone reed blocks. The quarter-tone reed blocks are able to produce complete quarter-tone scale of range of nearly five octaves. The tuning system used is quarter-tone equal temperament, in which the scale divides an octave into 24 equal-ratio steps.

Quarter-Tone Accordion Concerto No. 2 (2025) was composed with financial support from the Teoston sävellystilaustoimikunta and the Arts Promotion Centre Finland (TAIKE). Today many composers are interested in using micro-intervals. This increases demand for instruments able to produce them. The quarter-tone accordion is one of the answers for this demand. Hopefully the future of the quarter-tone accordion would be bright!

Sampo Haapamäki (April 2025)