Kalevi Aho(born 1949)

[Brian]

Timpani Concerto: Although the timpani is not a melodic instrument that would usually deserve a starring role in a concerto, I am secretly fond of this genre. I've even seen the world premiere of a new timpani concerto (by Steven Mackey, and employing various other implements besides drum and mallet, like dropping a tennis ball on a drum to get that unique bounce-bounce-bou-bou-bbbb rhythm).

This is a fun one. At the very start, we get hushed strings and a soft timpani rhythm, like the beginning of Shostakovich's Eleventh Symphony. A similar mood returns near the end, but in the meantime, Aho gets up to what you might call Usual Timpani Concerto Hijinks: the orchestra gets agitated and the drums just start pounding away. He doesn't have any particularly subtle or ingenious tricks to take this form to a new level of creativity. But the result is plenty entertaining. Although this has a typical quiet ending, there is one last gigantic burst of timpani (and bass drum) frenzy before that quietness sets in.

Piano Concerto No. 1: This much earlier (80s) work features Aho in a much more animated mode more closely aligned with the traditional modernists of other countries. Bartok has been cited as a comparison for this piece, and I definitely understand that, although there's also a lot of added bric-a-brac, including an old-timey police siren. The first movement is really alive with incident and bustle and virtuoso work. The second is marked by a tempo indication only, although it feels like it slows down continuously from start to end, with contemplative nature-like effects near the finish. Maybe we're walking through a cold Finnish forest.

The third movement begins as the first did, but then the piano breaks in with an old-fashioned repeated-note toccata. Things get violent. When the music reaches a breaking point, as so often with 80s Aho, that's the cue for everything to collapse and the slow finale to begin. Here that slow finale includes some Messiaen-like piano bird calls and nature sounds. You can't help wondering if the whole movement is a tribute to Olly. Quiet ending. Drink!



Rejoicing of the Deep Waters: Not often that you encounter an Aho piece shorter than 30 minutes. This 11-minute concert opener is more of a collection of sounds than usual for Aho, with very little structural through-line, but the ending is very striking.

Symphony No. 10: For the first time, I felt like I couldn't handle an Aho piece anymore and turned it off after 7 minutes. I think I'd simply overdosed. Now, the next day, the symphony sounds fine, which is good, because it is one of his most personal: dedicated to his parents, written specifically for the Lahti Symphony with numerous solo cadenzas for performers he knows, even containing a percussion instrument that he invented.

The first movement begins with a soft, lyrical violin melody and then slowly ratchets upwards in tension, including a passage with dinging repeated celesta note, like in Lutoslawski's Concerto for Orchestra (first movement). There's a lilting Mendelssohn-like fairy scherzo section around 5'. In general, the format of the movement seems to be something like gnarly rupture, cadenza, soft lovely bit, repeat. A short, typically violent scherzo ends with a long, slow cor anglais solo, and that introduces the 20-minute adagio.

The adagio is the heart of the piece, a movement that alternates calm, lyricism, reassurance (even in the form of consoling brass fanfares near the end, an emotion I've never felt from a fanfare), punctuated by outbursts of violence, anger, and despair.

For the first time, the melodic shapes, bold brass, and open-airiness of some of the music remind me of English orchestral works. There's a bit of Walton to the climax of the adagio, a bit of Lloyd or Brian or Vaughan Williams elsewhere.

Then we get to the fast finale (unusual for Aho), and things are back squarely in our composer's home language: slapping strings, pinched winds, grayish bleak melodies, orchestral saxophone, and a frenetic buildup to an oppressive, military-inflected (snare drum) loud ending. The loud ending is unusual. But the typically Aho-ian theme of the individual versus an oppressive greater societal force is in full evidence here. The guy really writes much more like a Soviet composer than a Finn. You wouldn't know that Finland is a basically harmless place. Maybe it isn't. Maybe it has some deep dark secrets.

None of these were favorites, but the timpani concerto might be closest. I do know that the next stop on the journey - Symphony 11 and the Symphonic Dances - includes some of my absolute favorite Aho.

[relm1]

Timpani Concerto: Although the timpani is not a melodic instrument that would usually deserve a starring role in a concerto, I am secretly fond of this genre. I've even seen the world premiere of a new timpani concerto (by Steven Mackey, and employing various other implements besides drum and mallet, like dropping a tennis ball on a drum to get that unique bounce-bounce-bou-bou-bbbb rhythm).

This is a fun one. At the very start, we get hushed strings and a soft timpani rhythm, like the beginning of Shostakovich's Eleventh Symphony. A similar mood returns near the end, but in the meantime, Aho gets up to what you might call Usual Timpani Concerto Hijinks: the orchestra gets agitated and the drums just start pounding away. He doesn't have any particularly subtle or ingenious tricks to take this form to a new level of creativity. But the result is plenty entertaining. Although this has a typical quiet ending, there is one last gigantic burst of timpani (and bass drum) frenzy before that quietness sets in.

Piano Concerto No. 1: This much earlier (80s) work features Aho in a much more animated mode more closely aligned with the traditional modernists of other countries. Bartok has been cited as a comparison for this piece, and I definitely understand that, although there's also a lot of added bric-a-brac, including an old-timey police siren. The first movement is really alive with incident and bustle and virtuoso work. The second is marked by a tempo indication only, although it feels like it slows down continuously from start to end, with contemplative nature-like effects near the finish. Maybe we're walking through a cold Finnish forest.

The third movement begins as the first did, but then the piano breaks in with an old-fashioned repeated-note toccata. Things get violent. When the music reaches a breaking point, as so often with 80s Aho, that's the cue for everything to collapse and the slow finale to begin. Here that slow finale includes some Messiaen-like piano bird calls and nature sounds. You can't help wondering if the whole movement is a tribute to Olly. Quiet ending. Drink!



Rejoicing of the Deep Waters: Not often that you encounter an Aho piece shorter than 30 minutes. This 11-minute concert opener is more of a collection of sounds than usual for Aho, with very little structural through-line, but the ending is very striking.

Symphony No. 10: For the first time, I felt like I couldn't handle an Aho piece anymore and turned it off after 7 minutes. I think I'd simply overdosed. Now, the next day, the symphony sounds fine, which is good, because it is one of his most personal: dedicated to his parents, written specifically for the Lahti Symphony with numerous solo cadenzas for performers he knows, even containing a percussion instrument that he invented.

The first movement begins with a soft, lyrical violin melody and then slowly ratchets upwards in tension, including a passage with dinging repeated celesta note, like in Lutoslawski's Concerto for Orchestra (first movement). There's a lilting Mendelssohn-like fairy scherzo section around 5'. In general, the format of the movement seems to be something like gnarly rupture, cadenza, soft lovely bit, repeat. A short, typically violent scherzo ends with a long, slow cor anglais solo, and that introduces the 20-minute adagio.

The adagio is the heart of the piece, a movement that alternates calm, lyricism, reassurance (even in the form of consoling brass fanfares near the end, an emotion I've never felt from a fanfare), punctuated by outbursts of violence, anger, and despair.

For the first time, the melodic shapes, bold brass, and open-airiness of some of the music remind me of English orchestral works. There's a bit of Walton to the climax of the adagio, a bit of Lloyd or Brian or Vaughan Williams elsewhere.

Then we get to the fast finale (unusual for Aho), and things are back squarely in our composer's home language: slapping strings, pinched winds, grayish bleak melodies, orchestral saxophone, and a frenetic buildup to an oppressive, military-inflected (snare drum) loud ending. The loud ending is unusual. But the typically Aho-ian theme of the individual versus an oppressive greater societal force is in full evidence here. The guy really writes much more like a Soviet composer than a Finn. You wouldn't know that Finland is a basically harmless place. Maybe it isn't. Maybe it has some deep dark secrets.

None of these were favorites, but the timpani concerto might be closest. I do know that the next stop on the journey - Symphony 11 and the Symphonic Dances - includes some of my absolute favorite Aho.

Great write up.  I believe "Rejoicing of the Deep Waters" isn't so much an opener as a suite or prelude to his opera, "Before We Are All Drowned".  So imagine there is a good bit of material from which it is drawn.  I love the 10th Symphony and find this disc overall excellent but can imagine it's tough to endure too much of it in one sitting.  I very much love Symphonic Dances/11 too.

[Brian]

Decided to take a bit of a detour before getting to 11.



I do love the clarinet concerto. It starts with a declamatory solo show-off feature for the clarinetist, who introduces the main material in looping, soaring lines over a series of punching orchestral chords. Aho's orchestration skill is at its best in this piece, as the full orchestra is deployed, but brass instruments (for example) usually appear as soloists, not in full force, so that the clarinet can always be heard. (There's a saxophone. Drink!) I think I've mentioned before Aho's habit of having the soloist in a concerto "pair up" with its orchestral partner, and there are some small clarinet duets here, including with the bass clarinet in the scherzo.

This concerto breaks from Aho's frequent oppressive/bleak mood into more showy virtuosity, not just for the soloist but for all the orchestral members. It's like a concerto for orchestra, but with one member privileged above the rest. Martin Fröst is, of course, spectacular at all the glissandi, leaps, nimble-fingered lines, and conversations with various orchestra members.

All the five movements lead into each other very smoothly, although there is a sort of anti-virtuosic ideology to the fact that the first three are fast and then the last two, representing the work's heart, are slower. The piece gets steadily quieter and less thrilling as it goes, aiming for something else. The fourth movement is very nearly another solo cadenza, the orchestra adding only soft murmurs of support to a long-breathed, soulful clarinet line. Time seems to stand still. That feeling of timelessness only increases as we move into the final epilogue, which is full of gorgeous soft, slow sounds. The description is "misterioso," but the religious feeling of a slow movement from "Pines of Rome" or the nocturnal birdcalls of French modernism are also fair comparisons. Quiet ending. Drink!



Aho has not written a lot for solo piano. The big piece here is the set of 19 Preludes, written when he was a teenager, before attending university. They're the most old-fashioned music of Aho's I've ever heard: they call to mind more lyrical late romantic miniatures, from the more melodic/romantic pieces in Shostakovich Op. 87 to the ballet transcriptions of Prokofiev to the works of people like Alexander Tcherepnin, Schulhoff, Sumera, and more traditional composers like Chopin or Grieg. No. 10 briefly has the energy of a Bach toccata.

I know these miniatures are minor works of a teenager, but I love miniatures as a genre, and Aho's are wonderful. They are simply enjoyable, by which I mean not "merely enjoyable" but "enjoyable for their simplicity."

Fraki groups the mature Aho's piano output into two bundles. First we get the easy stuff: two sets of pieces written for young players and a set of three "small pieces." Then come the longer, wilder Solo II (11 minutes) and the full-on Sonata (14').

The small pieces are mood works in more complicated hues, very much like the youthful ones, just with greater ambiguity. Fraki plays them a little slowly, on the whole, to bring out this moodiness. Otherwise there wouldn't be much to them. The sonatina has a particularly lovely slow movement, and the second of two pieces for young pianists is a particularly fun, deranged march.

Solo II is a sustained arc of intensity and suspense, only relieved in the final minute, when the pianist drifts up to the top of the keyboard with a series of soft, "resolving" chords (they resolve the mood only). The sonata picks up where this ended, with a mysterious mood clouded with more modernist language. Messiaen is the obvious big influence here. The first two movements are fast and frantic, while the long finale, which is called "tranquillo molto" (a lie) is built on a series of suspenseful trills.

Two very good listens today.

EDIT: Downloading a lossless copy of the piano music disc is only US $8.50 on eClassical, as the daily deal, for somewhere like 8-10 more hours. (Monday, January 9's daily deal)

[relm1]

Decided to take a bit of a detour before getting to 11.



I do love the clarinet concerto. It starts with a declamatory solo show-off feature for the clarinetist, who introduces the main material in looping, soaring lines over a series of punching orchestral chords. Aho's orchestration skill is at its best in this piece, as the full orchestra is deployed, but brass instruments (for example) usually appear as soloists, not in full force, so that the clarinet can always be heard. (There's a saxophone. Drink!) I think I've mentioned before Aho's habit of having the soloist in a concerto "pair up" with its orchestral partner, and there are some small clarinet duets here, including with the bass clarinet in the scherzo.

This concerto breaks from Aho's frequent oppressive/bleak mood into more showy virtuosity, not just for the soloist but for all the orchestral members. It's like a concerto for orchestra, but with one member privileged above the rest. Martin Fröst is, of course, spectacular at all the glissandi, leaps, nimble-fingered lines, and conversations with various orchestra members.

All the five movements lead into each other very smoothly, although there is a sort of anti-virtuosic ideology to the fact that the first three are fast and then the last two, representing the work's heart, are slower. The piece gets steadily quieter and less thrilling as it goes, aiming for something else. The fourth movement is very nearly another solo cadenza, the orchestra adding only soft murmurs of support to a long-breathed, soulful clarinet line. Time seems to stand still. That feeling of timelessness only increases as we move into the final epilogue, which is full of gorgeous soft, slow sounds. The description is "misterioso," but the religious feeling of a slow movement from "Pines of Rome" or the nocturnal birdcalls of French modernism are also fair comparisons. Quiet ending. Drink!



Aho has not written a lot for solo piano. The big piece here is the set of 19 Preludes, written when he was a teenager, before attending university. They're the most old-fashioned music of Aho's I've ever heard: they call to mind more lyrical late romantic miniatures, from the more melodic/romantic pieces in Shostakovich Op. 87 to the ballet transcriptions of Prokofiev to the works of people like Alexander Tcherepnin, Schulhoff, Sumera, and more traditional composers like Chopin or Grieg. No. 10 briefly has the energy of a Bach toccata.

I know these miniatures are minor works of a teenager, but I love miniatures as a genre, and Aho's are wonderful. They are simply enjoyable, by which I mean not "merely enjoyable" but "enjoyable for their simplicity."

Fraki groups the mature Aho's piano output into two bundles. First we get the easy stuff: two sets of pieces written for young players and a set of three "small pieces." Then come the longer, wilder Solo II (11 minutes) and the full-on Sonata (14').

The small pieces are mood works in more complicated hues, very much like the youthful ones, just with greater ambiguity. Fraki plays them a little slowly, on the whole, to bring out this moodiness. Otherwise there wouldn't be much to them. The sonatina has a particularly lovely slow movement, and the second of two pieces for young pianists is a particularly fun, deranged march.

Solo II is a sustained arc of intensity and suspense, only relieved in the final minute, when the pianist drifts up to the top of the keyboard with a series of soft, "resolving" chords (they resolve the mood only). The sonata picks up where this ended, with a mysterious mood clouded with more modernist language. Messiaen is the obvious big influence here. The first two movements are fast and frantic, while the long finale, which is called "tranquillo molto" (a lie) is built on a series of suspenseful trills.

Two very good listens today.

EDIT: Downloading a lossless copy of the piano music disc is only US $8.50 on eClassical, as the daily deal, for somewhere like 8-10 more hours. (Monday, January 9's daily deal)

Another very fine write up.  I actually loved the preludes partially because I liked the variety both stylistically and dramatically.  How so much of this music was so interesting and evocative.  Maybe not all of it life changing, but still memorable. 

[Brian]

GOSSIP TIME

The notes for the upcoming Violin Concerto No. 2 album on BIS say the following:
"The idea of composing my Second Violin Concerto was first mooted in June 2010, when a young German violinist, the winner of international prizes, contacted me and asked if I would like to compose a concerto for him. In the summer of 2012, however, when I was already preparing to compose the work, he unexpectedly gave up the idea of premièring this new violin concerto that would have been dedicated to him. After that, the project remained in abeyance until Elina Vähälä called me in the late autumn of 2012. A German friend had told her about the failure of my violin concerto plans, and she suggested that, rather than burying the project, I should instead compose my Second Violin Concerto for her."

Now. Who do we think is the young German violinist, a winner of international prizes, who rejected Aho?

Augustin Hadelich has German parents and won a major competition (Indianapolis) in 2006 and a major grant (Avery Fisher) in 2009. So that's one theory. He is now an American citizen, but Aho might not know that.

[Pohjolas Daughter]

GOSSIP TIME

The notes for the upcoming Violin Concerto No. 2 album on BIS say the following:
"The idea of composing my Second Violin Concerto was first mooted in June 2010, when a young German violinist, the winner of international prizes, contacted me and asked if I would like to compose a concerto for him. In the summer of 2012, however, when I was already preparing to compose the work, he unexpectedly gave up the idea of premièring this new violin concerto that would have been dedicated to him. After that, the project remained in abeyance until Elina Vähälä called me in the late autumn of 2012. A German friend had told her about the failure of my violin concerto plans, and she suggested that, rather than burying the project, I should instead compose my Second Violin Concerto for her."

Now. Who do we think is the young German violinist, a winner of international prizes, who rejected Aho?

Augustin Hadelich has German parents and won a major competition (Indianapolis) in 2006 and a major grant (Avery Fisher) in 2009. So that's one theory. He is now an American citizen, but Aho might not know that.

No idea about who requested the concerto, but wondering more as to why they would change their mind?  I haven't heard of that one before now.  Wondering what they were thinking....afraid that they couldn't do it justice?  How does something like that work?  Was the violinist asked to help provide any fees/commissions, etc.?

PD

[relm1]

No idea about who requested the concerto, but wondering more as to why they would change their mind?  I haven't heard of that one before now.  Wondering what they were thinking....afraid that they couldn't do it justice?  How does something like that work?  Was the violinist asked to help provide any fees/commissions, etc.?

PD

I could imagine lots of reasons.  A friend and I have talked about commissioning a concerto from a big composer.  The performer is on board and the composer is willing, but the work doesn't exist without the conductor/music director being on board and that usually is a great deal more difficult because orchestras tend to schedule years in advance because of various contract negotiations, budgeting, etc.  So, it's possible the performer couldn't keep the conductor onboard or failed to get a conductor and orchestra without lots of issues such as the one who was more agreeable to Aho's style might not have had the budget for a commission but the one with the budget and schedule, might not have been as interested and preferred a different composer, etc.  Music directors are planning out 2024-2025 season now with 2023-24 already planned but in negotiations, approvals from board of director, and budgeting cycles.  Add to this, sometimes conductors don't have contracts that stretch out forever.  They sometimes are in two year extensions so you can imagine once you get to 2025, the conductor isn't assured their position yet. 

[Pohjolas Daughter]

I could imagine lots of reasons.  A friend and I have talked about commissioning a concerto from a big composer.  The performer is on board and the composer is willing, but the work doesn't exist without the conductor/music director being on board and that usually is a great deal more difficult because orchestras tend to schedule years in advance because of various contract negotiations, budgeting, etc.  So, it's possible the performer couldn't keep the conductor onboard or failed to get a conductor and orchestra without lots of issues such as the one who was more agreeable to Aho's style might not have had the budget for a commission but the one with the budget and schedule, might not have been as interested and preferred a different composer, etc.  Music directors are planning out 2024-2025 season now with 2023-24 already planned but in negotiations, approvals from board of director, and budgeting cycles.  Add to this, sometimes conductors don't have contracts that stretch out forever.  They sometimes are in two year extensions so you can imagine once you get to 2025, the conductor isn't assured their position yet. 

Oh, interesting!  I hadn't realized how things worked these days...thanks for the info.

PD

[Brian]

My Ahodyssey moves forward to a brand-new release today, with the Violin Concerto No 2 (2013) and Cello Concerto No 2 (2013).

The Violin Concerto No 2 has a 90-second orchestral introduction, dominated by woodwinds, introducing an enigmatic but memorable tune that winds backwards and forwards, up and down, sort of like a ping pong ball bouncing between notes. Elina Vähälä then enters with a big, sweet immediately appealing tone (to go with her umlaut collection). This is gradually revealed to be a fully virtuoso concerto in the romantic construction, full of display, double-stopping, and gorgeous solos. There are colorful cadenzas and roiling climaxes (I dig the end of the first movement). The finale threatens midway to be winding down toward a quiet ending, but Aho is saving his most vigorous music for the end, with stamping timpani, swirling woodwinds, and plenty of opportunity for Vähälä to flex her muscles. It's a real showoff piece and she absolutely rises to the occasion.

What the concerto lacks is a memorable core idea or emotional point. I expected that woodwind tune to be the main theme, but it sort of disappeared (or perhaps, in Aho's typical fashion, was transformed beyond recognition using sophisticated principles). Without a clear theme-based structure, this gorgeous, exciting music was a little bit like watching a foreign-language film without subtitles on. I enjoyed all the imagery, appreciated the craft, but didn't always know what was going on.

The Cello Concerto No 2 is in five shorter movements rather than the violin concerto's more traditional three. The first is a berceuse with muted cello, English horn, and lower brass. With a short break for the cellist, it leads into a shortish presto, which then leads into a longer adagio where the cello really gets to sing and wax lyrical. Jonathan Roozeman, a name new to me, handles this part with particular skill and appealing sound (a sort of just-right weeping vibrato). He gets to bust out the mute again in the scherzo, and the finale combines elements of all the previous movements, plus a pizzicato and harmonics cadenza, before rushing to a quick, short, exciting conclusion.

Because the cello concerto is already more episodic, in smaller movements, I don't mind the similar approach to (i.e. lack of) an obvious thematic through-line. Aho does a skillful job linking segments, and the cello itself clearly suggested a consistent image/sound: this is a very nocturnal piece, full of shadows and moonlight, like a series of tableaux of night scenes. The final cadenza, especially evokes starlight, meteor showers, or perhaps aurora borealis. It's the most memorable moment on the disc for me.

I wish the tinkly bells had been edited out of both pieces. I don't know what this kind of tinkly bell is called, but it's the ones that always are used for really sappy moments in romantic movies. Like tiny sleigh bells or something. Almost always descending in pitch as they tinkle. Like sappy windchimes. (OK, I checked with the publisher's website and I think it's a "bell tree." Hate bell trees!)

Remarkably, Aho explains in his notes that he was able to play through both pieces (the cello piece very slowly). The violin part, then, is very flashy-sounding and full of double-stopping, but actually very violinistic.

Overall, a very good disc of pieces I will probably revisit 3-4 more times to see how they grow on me. The initial impression is of solid B-tier Aho, not the top-shelf stuff but certainly quite rewarding and beautiful.

[DavidW]

Thanks for the review Brian.  I've had this album on my list ever since I saw it on the new releases but never got around to it.

[Brian]

Turns out I've heard the first Wind Quintet before. It's a sharp, biting, assertive 20-minute piece in four movements but effectively in seven, since the first three have A/B structures. The work is characterized by harsh, brash toccatas, screeching high parts (the oboist is usually asked to play higher than the flute), angry duck quacks*, and moments of pensive reflection. In the finale, all five players take turns performing offstage. This was in part because of Aho's desire to achieve a true pianissimo, which is hard to do with a wind ensemble.

*sorry, I mean tonal honking

It's an absolute cracker of a piece, full of totally memorable stuff. Truly top-tier Aho. The Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quintet adopted this work so passionately that they commissioned a second quintet, and that one's a whopper, a 31-minute piece. Also, in a tiny tribute to its commissioners, Aho writes all the tempo instructions in German.

One thing that's interesting about the second quintet is that it ropes in "bonus" instruments: piccolo, cor anglais, alto flute. The piccolo is used to brighten the fast scherzo, while the two lower instruments mellow out the central slow movement. The cor anglais is also prominent at the very beginning, in an opener that, over an 11-minute arc, very subtly grows from a small seed to a large statement. It's a bit like the first movement of the Sibelius Fifth, as one big accelerando and crescendo stretching across a huge amount of music. (Worth noting that Aho, in his own notes, says this movement lasts 14 minutes and the whole piece 34, indicating the BPO players have either cut something or significantly deviated from his preferred tempo.)

The central scherzo and slow movement have the feel of an epic symphony, while the finale slips slowly down to a quiet ending (drink!). My attention wandered only in the finale; the first three movements are absorbing. The music is at times so hard you can hear the players straining to hit their notes, especially the horn at the first movement's climax.

54 minutes makes a short CD, especially when you learn that in 2018, this ensemble commissioned a five-minute encore piece from Aho, which the publisher describes as "hilarious". (I found it while searching the publisher's site to write the previous post.) It's not here. What does "hilarious" Aho sound like? The people want to know!

[Skogwald]

My dad told me a story of how he was ranting about symphony writing at a Bruckner concert to a stranger sitting next to him. Only afterwards did he realize that the guy listening politely was none other than Kalevi Aho! 

[Pohjolas Daughter]

My dad told me a story of how he was ranting about symphony writing at a Bruckner concert to a stranger sitting next to him. Only afterwards did he realize that the guy listening politely was none other than Kalevi Aho! 

Wow!

PD

[DavidW]

Finally gave it a listen.  It was good music that I immediately forgot both concertos once I stopped listening!

[Brian]

I've already discussed Symphony No. 9 upthread; today we're talking Cello Concerto, which begins with extremely high-pitched sounds - harmonics that sound like a combination of synthesizer, celesta, and tiny organ pipes. It is disquieting, and would probably upset all the neighborhood dogs. The cello emerges from this beeping, clicking thicket of high pitches, playing at the top of its range. The music seems to float downwards as if weightless, the cello spinning and stamping and snorting. Finally, three minutes in, we learn the first culprit for some of those strange, unnatural high noises: an orchestral accordion. There's also a mandolin, both celesta and glockenspiel, saxophone, and (yes) organ. It's a very strange orchestration for a very strange piece. Even in Aho's canon, this is a weird work.

Essentially, the "regular" orchestra and the strange instruments are all pitted in combat, with the cello as a sort of cross between antagonist, moderator, and referee.

"The music of the second movement is no longer coherent," the booklet notes warn. (I wonder if that's meant to be dry humor.) The orchestra seems to explode in rage here, lashing out and sometimes dissolving into messy organ slides. Between outbursts, at times, it seems like nobody knows what to do. The cello steps in like a candle in the darkness. There's a long virtuosic cadenza which ushers in softer, more delicate, more eccentric orchestration in the moments that follow (the cello duets with a muted violin, for example). This leads back to the same super-high-pitched atmosphere from the beginning, and confirmation that we really were hearing organ at the start. There are a few more outbursts to go, each less organized than the last, until the orchestra basically dissolves into near-silent disarray. This is one of Aho's hardest, least compromising, least pleasing pieces.



The Symphonic Dances, by contrast, are one of Aho's biggest crowd-pleasers, one of the most immediately colorful, melodic, tonal pieces in his catalog. I've listened to them several times before, but this time I decided to listen in their proper context: as Act III of the unfinished Uuno Klami ballet "Whirls."

The "Whirls" discography is rather perplexing. Act I is a half hour long and was released on a BIS disc (pictured). It's orchestrated by Kalevi Aho from Klami's original plan. Act II was apparently repurposed by Klami into two suites, comprising dances of the day and night, because he realized he was going to die before finishing and needed to fulfill some commissions. The two suites, totaling 40 minutes, are on a different BIS disc. Finally, many years later, Aho took up the challenge of composing Act III from scratch. A premiere of the full ballet was scheduled, but the ballet company's leader unexpectedly opposed the piece and expressed a dislike for it. Aho then withdrew Act III and relabeled it "Symphonic Dances: Homage to Uuno Klami."

If you have access to the three BIS discs or a streaming service, you can patch together all three acts: the Aho original, the Klami original, and Klami orchestrated by Aho. The work as a whole lasts 100 minutes.

Unfortunately, "Whirls: Act I" didn't appear on the various streaming services I have access to. Relative to other obscurities in the BIS catalog, it seems harder to find in general, though the physical disc is still available at various sources (like Presto and Amazon Marketplace).

I decided to plunge into Klami's suites (Act II) instead. The music is more progressive and sparse than I expected from this typically romantic composer, like a sequel to Sibelius' Tempest. The orchestration is quite interesting (contrabassoon, celesta, etc.), the material is genial, and there are a lot of very good trumpet solos where the Lahti player does proud. There's a final scene, the "nocturnal dance of the north star," that really creates some incredible atmosphere.

Thus the Aho Act III is actually not as surprising or out of place as I had expected. It is almost all fast music, which is quite different from Klami's Act II, but apart from a "grotesque" dance, it falls more in line with the original than I had ever thought before. The dances are backloaded: three short ones followed by a 14-minute epic "Dance of the Winds and Fires" that seems to combine elements of waltz and tarantella, plus pre-recorded nature sounds that Klami would have never used. Those nature sounds are most prominent at the very end, where they calm down the fire of the orchestra and ease our way into a well-earned quiet ending (drink!).

I guess I have to buy the CD containing Act I in Aho's orchestration now...or perhaps download Act I from eClassical.

[foxandpeng]

These reviews are immensely helpful, Brian. Thank you.

[Brian]

Glad to hear that! They're also meant to help my own creaky memory cells 

-

Starting up again on one of yesterday's CDs, with Symphony No. 11, scored for six percussionists and orchestra. Here the group Kroumata augments the Lahti Symphony. For a percussion bonanza, this is a remarkably subtle score, with only a few big loud climaxes. For the first three minutes, the impression one gets is of a nature scene - maybe an icy winter sunrise (somewhere that the sun still rises in winter).

Excessive percussion in an orchestral score is one of my personal pet peeves. I know it's a personal thing, but a lot of contemporary music will have me thinking things like, "that didn't need a wood block." Aho, of course, as a master orchestrator, manages to avoid this pitfall. Everything feels seamless. The really big percussion feature is at the heart of the second movement (of three), meaning at the exact midpoint of the piece. Here, there's sort of a Rite-inspired primitive allegro passage with lots of percussion jamming across an array of instruments, tuba solos, and orchestral cries. It's not nearly as violent as the Rite. It's more like a somewhat martial tribal ceremony. Aho himself just says that his intention was to be "rhythmically hypnotic."

The finale—which is also the longest movement—is a total contrast, a solemn, tranquil slow movement where the percussion is very sensitively used to add the tiniest bits of color to the orchestra's stillness. The nature themes I sensed early in the piece return, especially in a wonderfully melodic late passage for flutes. A pretty darn magical piece and, in all, one of the best and easiest and most accessible starting points for anybody who wants to get into Aho.

Speaking of best and most accessible starting points for anybody who wants to get into Aho:



Two approachable, easily digested, but substantial concertos make up this disc. Both begin slowly and mysteriously, have fast second and fourth movements, and end quietly.

The Trombone Concerto begins with the trombone emerging from a group of melodic woodwind lines; the first movement is in an arc form, rising to a climax from near-silence and fading back. The trombone gets to do a lot of different things here: mutes, flutter-tonguing (I think), and the kind of womp-womp sound that usually happens in comedic settings. Of course, Aho doesn't do comedic settings. As this movement fades back down, the trombone gets a pensive cadenza, which leads directly into a strongly percussive blitz of a presto second movement. (The percussion, with lots of hands on drumskins, sounds vaguely Middle Eastern, though the rest of the orchestra and trombone sound typically Ahoian/post-Soviet.) We get a similar structure in the second half: solemn slow movement, fast finale, and then a slowdown to a quiet ending (drink!) complete with my personal bugbear, the bell tree.

The Trombone Concerto has actually been one of my favorite Aho works for a while, but this listen around, I couldn't help thinking that it was a little bit "generic" to his output. It's a good expression of what his soundworld is like, his skill at hushed calm and his exploitation of the full range of orchestral resources. But it doesn't really have a standout or salient feature, and since Aho doesn't really do tunes, that makes it hard to put a finger on exactly why the concerto is so good—or why it is not especially great. I heard a DSCH motif quote in the finale. Maybe I like this piece just because I like trombones, and Jörgen van Rijen is one of the best players on earth.

The Trumpet Concerto really does start off very similarly, with a hushed, mysterious atmosphere teeming with woodwind supporting players. The trumpet itself takes on a really striking, unusual muted color, almost like sepia in a portrait. For a while, I thought it was an alto saxophone. (Don't worry: there is a saxophone later.)

There really are a lot of similarities to the Trombone Concerto, but one thing I appreciated here was the shifting spotlight that Aho uses to allow all sorts of orchestra members brief solos. The trumpet part, too, is light, dextrous, and athletic. Whether negotiating fast passages while muted or beaming pure bugle-like sounds in the intermezzo, Alain de Rudder really gets an incredible solo showcase here. I think there's quite a lot of percussion in this concerto because it is a section that can contrast well with the trumpet and not drown it out. (The finale has a lot of church bell banging.) Although the piece is mostly in minor keys, it is less sinister than many Aho pieces, and bears less of his insistent theme of a soloist or small group vs. orchestral oppressor. The trumpet's lightness and nimbleness must inform that character. The ending of this concerto is rather abrupt - the music slows down very suddenly and fades into quiet (drink!) without much warning at all.

This was a disc I anticipated greatly because I had very good memories of it, but was surprised to find that this spin was less convincing. Maybe because I've heard so much Aho, but these works now sounded very representative of his style without scaling any particular heights. I'd still recommend them to newcomers, but I'd promise them better stuff awaits elsewhere. The performances are outstanding.

[DavidW]

Speaking of best and most accessible starting points for anybody who wants to get into Aho:

I don't like those works that much!  Even though my entry point was the 10th symphony, I think the 4th is the most accessible since it is so Shostakovich-esque.

[relm1]

I don't like those works that much!  Even though my entry point was the 10th symphony, I think the 4th is the most accessible since it is so Shostakovich-esque.

Symphony No 1 is the most accessible and most Shostakovich-esque I think.

[DavidW]

Symphony No 1 is the most accessible and most Shostakovich-esque I think.

I haven't listened to it, I'll have to do that soonish.