
I find Einojuhani Rautavaara a reliable composer. I’ve picked up a number of recordings of his music over the past five or six years, and with the exception of his dull opera
Rasputin, I’ve always like what I heard. So I picked up the Naxos disc of his second and third piano concertos and the small orchestral work
Isle of Bliss with relatively high expectations. I was satifisfied.
The disc opens with
Isle of Bliss, which is based on a poem by the Finnish poet Aleksis Kivi. (The inspiration for one of Rautavaara’s finest works, the opera
Aleksis Kivi.) The compact tone poem opens vigorously and joyously, and quickly segues into a lush, dreamy, and appropriately slower sound world, with the winds carefully and delicately evoking bird calls, something so dear to this composer and critical in this work, what being based on the poem
Home of the Birds. As the work continues to unfold, the work seems to take on a calm, and, well, blissful feel. It’s a fine work, and almost strikes me as something a cooler Richard Strauss may have written had he been informed by 1990s ideas.
The next work is the third piano concerto,
Gift of Dreams, originally dedicated to Vladimir Ashkenazy, who has recorded it. Here the pianist is Laura Mikkola. Anyhoo, the opening
Tranquillo, as the title suggests, opens calmly, with lovely, soothing string playing of a New Age-cum-Romanticism sort – but in a good way. The piano enters gently, with sparse notes, but then it picks up until a long run ushers in the winds then brass. I detected the rather obvious influence of Bartok’s Third Piano Concerto (a
very good thing!) and even hints of Rachmaninov. (It
was written for Ashkenazy, so that only makes sense.) The piano writing becomes dazzling, though never over the top. The
Adagio assai is slow, calm, and a bit cool at the open, with the pianist this time coming right to the forefront. In such an environment excess would not do, so excess there is not. As the movement progresses the music becomes more vigorous, with especially tasty swirls in the high strings and drive in the lower strings, with rumbling timpani helping to ratchet up the intensity in the middle. Then it calms down a bit, revealing a conservative overall structure. The concluding
Energico is more, um, energetic, with both the soloist and band getting to let loose a bit. With drum thwacks aplenty, and pulsing string playing, and virtuosic piano writing and playing, the work ends with a standard concerto finale, though one that fades away nicely at the end. All the while the work possesses that unique Rautavaara sound, with lush sounds informed by prickly compositional devices, all merged into a most satisfying package. Having heard all three of Rautavaara’s piano concertos, I must say that I like this one the most.
The disc closes with the fine second piano concerto. The opening
In Viaggio starts of sparse, with a bass emphasized orchestra underpinning shimmering piano figurations that continue while the whole orchestra begins to play. The first solo part for the pianist isn’t much more than a continuation of the opening material, though as the orchestra reenters and the whole work develops, the piano part also develops. The orchestral writing itself becomes more potent, with prominent percussion and swelling strings. A nice, beefy opener. The
Sognando e libero opens with comparatively gentle, ruminative piano playing and orchestral playing to match, though the strings sting a bit, hints of unease in the air. Then everything speeds up, building to a powerful climax before subsiding. The concluding
Uccelli sulle passion finds Ms Mikkola playing knotty, almost neo-Schoenbergian piano music solo, and then when the orchestra plays, it’s in a gliding, undulating fashion, with the strings notable again for their beauty and bite. The piano plays in a similar fashion throughout, in what sounds to be challenging writing. It’s hard to tell if the soloist is now the accompanist at times, but both band and soloist take to the fore from time to time. Rautavaara’s distinctive wind writing (usually ascending solo bursts) pop up here and there, and the whole thing fades away to nothingness. This is a very knotty piece, but it’s also very approachable.
Indeed, that may be the key to the success of this disc and of Rautavaara generally. His music is both modern and respects (and borrows from) tradition. He’s not afraid to write something dense, gnarly, and rigorous. But he’s also not afraid to write beautiful music. And he has the ability to make even serial music conventionally beautiful. These three works all reinforce his talents. That’s why I find him to be one of the greatest of composers active in the last two or three decades.
As to the performers, Ms Mikkola does a superb job, and Eri Klas and his Dutch band far more than ably support her. Superb sound rounds out a superb disc.