Kalevi Aho(born 1949)

[Brian]

At the end of this listening journey I will have to do a Todd-style roundup of all the various works, but the Fourth Symphony is definitely also a very good starting point. Maybe the best. (Or maybe the best would be the Ninth for someone with a less doom-laden mindset.)

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A mix of different works and instrumentations here. The disc starts with a Prelude, Toccata, and Postlude for cello and piano, a '70s student piece where Aho is really testing the limits of conventional cello playing. It's one of those youthful pieces that is immediately engaging and likable both for what it is (a 10-minute virtuoso showpiece) and what it is not (any kind of original statement of a new artistic voice). Basically, if you like Soviet composers, early tonal Lutoslawski, late Penderecki, etc., you'll like this. I most enjoyed the slow-fast-slow structure, which really succeeds in making you feel like those 10 minutes were a complete experience. The recording on Qobuz does have an odd effect where the cello seems to bounce between headphone channels during the toccata's climaxes.

The Lamento for two violins is played here by Pekka and Jaakko Kuusisto, and it has an added poignancy now that Jaakko has died, age 48, of brain cancer. (The piece was written in memory of a violinist who died 20 years earlier, and was played at that violinist's funeral.) It's a miniature, which accomplishes its title goal. The recorded sound is very, very close - it sounds like you're sitting between two violinists each standing about six feet away from you.

Halla, for violin and piano, is sort of an extended wail, but in a pleasant way? It's quite virtuosic for only 8 minutes, loads of double stopping, and a very outdoorsy, extroverted violin personality. Apparently the title means "Frost," though I could be forgiven for thinking it means "holler," in the rustic sense. The ending section, where the violinist adds the mute and the music retraces its steps in a quieter manner, is really striking.

Next Jaakko Kuusisto gets an entire half-hour to himself, first in the Sonata for Solo Violin, then In Memoriam Pehr Henrik Nordgren. The sonata is unsurprisingly inspired by Bach and Bartok, especially Bach; the first movement starts in the "tempo of the chaconne" (Bach's, of course), but sounding quite different and building to a pained, pinched climax of high notes. The work as a whole is austere, academic-sounding, and based on the intervals in B-A-C-H (not always those notes, though). It has bits of Bach almost-quotes mixed into the generally bleak landscape. In Memoriam is unfortunately also based on the "musical letters in Nordgren's name," rather than any particular feeling about that late composer. I found the really high notes near the end rather grating and lowered the volume.

Piano Sonata No. 2, from 2016, is an oblique tribute to Beethoven's Hammerklavier: Aho uses Hammerklavier as a starting point, but deliberately misquotes it and then develops movements off of the misquotes. This starts at the very beginning, which is like a weird mix of the start of Hammerklavier and the start of Mozart's 40th Symphony. The music recognizably stays on Beethoven's plan for another few minutes, but spinning off into Aho's own directions. This generally describes the rest of the piece, though it's in five movements rather than four, Aho inserting a second moment of calm before the scherzo. He also frontloads the work's structure; this is not a direct, deliberate copying of Beethoven's, and doesn't have a long slow movement or fugal finale. (Instead, the finale has Messiaenic birdsong leading into a quiet ending [drink!].) The Beethoven influence lightens and lessens as the piece progresses, and it becomes more a collection of striking images, some of them searing or unpleasant, some of them calmer and more enigmatic.

A real mixed bag of a disc, and I don't mean that in a judgmental way - it just contains so many different styles and eras of Aho's career, more than 40 years of compositions, ranging from funeral music to competition music. Probably primarily for completists, but there is some really cool stuff here.

[kyjo]

Aho is a rather hit-and-miss composer
for me. Some of his stuff I find too dark/depressing/confrontational for my tastes, but other works I find quite enthralling. One such work is the recent Triple Concerto for piano trio and orchestra:



The slower sections show Aho at his most generously lyrical, and the faster sections don't lack the drive and dramatic intensity that he is known for. A most satisfying and accessible work which I recommend very highly!

[relm1]

Aho is a rather hit-and-miss composer
for me. Some of his stuff I find too dark/depressing/confrontational for my tastes, but other works I find quite enthralling. One such work is the recent Triple Concerto for piano trio and orchestra:



The slower sections show Aho at his most generously lyrical, and the faster sections don't lack the drive and dramatic intensity that he is known for. A most satisfying and accessible work which I recommend very highly!

This album surprised me too in how lyrical it was.  I wonder if it's a good entry to Aho or misleading.  Maybe it just shows another side of him that is always there but not always at the forefront. 

[Brian]

I didn't know what to expect from a 37-minute quintet for bassoon and strings. And once it started, I realized I even more didn't know what to expect. It starts with a neoclassical "overture" that then starts "going wrong," with the Stravinskian clean lines getting mucked up by "wrong" notes and undercurrents of sheer weirdness. The bassoon gets a prominent, soloistic role. Unusually for Aho, the piece is broken up into six shortish movements rather than a smaller number of medium-long ones: Overture, Parody, Scherzo, Cadenza, Finale, Epilog, all played without breaks. (It's not unusual at all, in his work, for the finale to be followed by a quiet epilogue. Dude loves an epilogue.)

The parody movement starts with the strings playing the accompaniment to Schubert's Ave Maria, as the bassoon places a straight-laced almost operetta-style melody over them. Then things start getting weird, a la Salvador Dalí and the melting clocks. Once the weirdness accelerates enough, we get to a harried but surprisingly muted scherzo. The scherzo leans heavily on the four string players, setting the stage for the bassoon's very long cadenza. (Though the cadenza movement does involve some string playing, the bassoonist has 4-and-a-half minutes all by him- or herself before the viola joins for a duet and then, gradually, other strings get solos too.) As so often with Aho, the "real" finale comes first, and then the music disintegrates into fragments and collapses. (Quiet ending. Drink!)

He really believes in music collapsing into nothingness. It almost amounts to a philosophy of artwork, that a piece of art should be known to "end," not with an artificial ending but with the natural death most living creatures eventually face. I wonder if he had taken up painting, if one side of his canvas would always have ripped-up exposed threads. Or if he'd become a novelist, and all his novels had kept going until all his characters had died.

The next Quintet is for the very strange combination of alto saxophone, bassoon, viola, cello, and double bass. This is an unusually resonant, spooky combination of instruments, and they don't really offer a huge amount of range. There aren't a lot of high notes. As a result, even though the combination sounds weird on paper, it is coherent in a very interesting way. The piece is structured in two big movements - both generally slow-fast-slow - built around a fast scherzo. It is a good example of Aho's "organic" style, in the sense that it follows material blooming and growing and intensifying. I didn't take a lot of notes but quite enjoyed it.



This has become one of his most famous pieces, in part because of the commission itself, which was to write a piece to be played outdoors in the round on the side of a mountain, in a shallow natural basin resembling an amphitheatre. The SACD is famous because of the deliberate surround effect of the music. On headphones, it's relatively low-level, but that benefits the serene nature quality of the music, which has a real evocative magic. It's Aho at his most Rautavaaran, full of folksy, primitive beauty and distant effects. I checked at what I thought was the end of the first movement, but it was the end of the second, time had passed so quickly. The third movement involves Nielsen-Espansiva-style vocalists singing "yaha" in various places, adding to the spooky mysticism of the piece. At times, the orchestra flares up with threats to get really big and loud, but it doesn't, yet. The vocalists also blend together with some affecting alto sax solos.

Then comes the finale - a big storm, like that in the Symphonic Dances. This would be tremendously fun to see live, what with the punchy brass, bass drums, wind machines, and so on. Then, like Rimsky-Korsakov's version of Night on Bald Mountain, a church bell tolls and everything calms down again. The vocalists "yaha" again, and the saxophone leads the fade into quiet. (Drink!) Aho writes engagingly in the booklet note about how he composed as little fast music as possible, due to the threat of wind and unsynchronized playing, and how the farthest musicians are 300 feet from the conductor. I do wonder whether he really needed to spend 10 days in cold midwinter composing onsite in a tiny cabin by himself in order to capture the right feel. But hey, it is a special piece and destined to remain unique in the world repertoire (not to mention his own).

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I started this Aho diary more than a year ago, a ridiculously long time. To motivate me to finish up, here is a list of the remaining BIS Aho discs (please let me know if there are any essentials missing):
organ solo CDs (might skip these), Symphonies Nos. 13-15 and their CD pairings, the chamber symphonies, and the brand-new disc featuring a soprano saxophone concerto.

[Brian]

The three chamber symphonies span from the mid-70s to the mid-90s, but generally fall into the category of more austere, gloomy Aho. The First is just 13 minutes, the Second just 16.

No. 1 alternates a slow, falling melody and sharp toccata-like outbursts. The subjects intermingle and develop until the string orchestra disintegrates, at about 9', into a series of soloists - like Metamorphosen, seemingly everybody has a separate line here - who play against each other through the climax. Then it's back to the moody, mysterious opening. At the end, only a few of the players remain, exchanging the most fleeting of little bitty ideas as the music dissolves into silence. (Drink!)

No. 2 is in three movements, two unmarked, the finale "furioso." The first picks up a similar emotional mood to the previous symphony, even if the techniques are different and rely more on keeping the string sections together. There are also echoes of Sibelius' Fourth Symphony. The "furioso" finale has some really cool writing in it, lots of freaky/scary imagery and suspense movie moments. Right when things seem to be "getting good," though (depending on your definition), the music begins Aho's typical process of fragmentation, deconstruction, and fadeout into silence. (Drink!)

No. 3 is the largest of the three by far, in four movements with titles and scored for alto saxophone and string orchestra, almost like a concerto. The strings get a whole movement to themselves before the saxophone comes in for a long, haunting, nature-like solo (echoes of birdsong for sure) subtitled "I have heard the wild geese calling." I think the saxophonist is also walking on stage while this happens, as his volume slowly but steadily increases from an offstage effect.

The first half of the third movement is gorgeous, one of the most romantic and old-fashioned things Aho has ever composed. It's a lush nocturne with the saxophone playing a soft, long-limbed melody over strings - very old-school stuff. The saxophone jumps in with a more animated solo for the second half, and this leads into the finale, where nature seemingly awakens. As you might expect knowing this composer's obsession with closing the circle, the birdcalling saxophonist walks back offstage as the music ends quietly. (Drink!)



This disc, I think, is one I've played a few times previously. Hurwitz says the piano's entrance is instantly memorable, which is a little funny because it's one repeated note over and over. Then, admittedly, it does become memorable. There are a lot of trills and riffs, sort of but not quite birdsongy, before the (string only) orchestra begins to join in. While the music is certainly more tonal and surface-level "accessible" than the chamber symphonies, I don't find it to have much of a discernible arc or structure, just a bunch of very appealing stuff happening. I have voiced this complaint before with Aho. Perhaps the issue is that he is often developing cells so small and so concise, that their development is hard to notice unless you have the score open with notes.

One thing I have lots of respect for is the anti-virtuoso nature of the piano part, which is truly "musical" and part of the ensemble. (Aho does note that it's still hard to play, even though not full of "fireworks".) It also begins to return, at the end, to the repeated notes of the beginning. In that context, I find the ending pretty satisfying (contra Hurwitz), though it does create a sense that not a whole lot happened over the last 28 minutes. Studied and serious without being off-putting or austere, this piece falls into a kind of middle ground.

The Symphony No. 13 is a 40-minute epic, written for the Lahti Symphony's new concert hall, and based on material from one of Aho's 90s operas. The conceit is a little weird: its many sections (21 named with tempo markings, but all sorted into just 2 movements) are representations of different human "characters" and personalities. Unlike Elgar's Enigma, Aho is not depicting real people. He's writing a symphony as if it were a Dickens novel, with loads of different people popping up and interacting with each other. Accordingly, the piece is organized into chapters rather than developed forms, and when tunes recur, they recur as "characters": associated with the same instrument as before, just in a new scene interacting with other tunes.

The result, as you listen, is sort of a free-flowing fantasia. Structurally/programmatically, I know this is not supposed to be "serious." But it is a lot of fun. Like the Symphonic Dances, it's an example of what can happen when Aho lets go of his philosophical schemes and just writes some fun music. I wonder what would result if somebody commissioned of him a piece like Ravel's La Valse, that mixes parody of a genre with the real thing.

Anyway. This is a bunch of fun, has a bunch of solos (like a concerto for orchestra), and ends "in modo proclamante," with fanfares from all over the auditorium in different directions. I do think it goes on a little too long - there are probably 4-5 minutes to be trimmed - but almost all the episodes are fun, and you can tell even on this CD when spacial effects are used, like balcony trumpets. A very near favorite. Quiet ending (drink!).

[Brian]

Oops, I'm not getting off the hook that easily! I just discovered a cache of four more Aho albums on Qobuz that weren't there during my first search, including the missing Uuno Klami orchestration alluded to on a previous page of this (now very long) diary. (Note to self: next time choose a less prodigious composer.)



My expectations for a Soprano Saxophone Concerto were very low. Basically the only soprano sax that I like is Sidney Bechet's (sorry, Coltrane). But Kalevi Aho really understands how to use the bizarre timbre of this instrument to evocative, spooky effect. The concerto is just 24 minutes, with a slow intro where the sax plays a mysterious, kind of nature-like melody over open strings. It evokes all kinds of images: still winter landscapes, lone birds floating on lakes. As the saxophone steps aside, other woodwind instruments bubble up to take its place, in a succession of solos. The music gradually accelerates into a brief presto, has a semi-cadenza with occasional flickers of orchestral accompaniment, and ends abruptly but sensibly. This first movement takes up half the work's length.

Then we get a "misterioso" slow movement, not quite five minutes, mostly featuring the saxophone by itself, bending notes and trying at times to almost split them. (Oh, Aho in the booklet says these are micro-intervals.) The orchestra just plays pedal points, almost inaudible most of the time. The finale, surprisingly, begins almost march-like. It has a strong rhythm and a forceful determination to use all the instruments onstage, unlike some of the previous sections. Interestingly, some of the fastest bits are kept very quiet. This helps the soprano sax stand out, of course, but it also continues the somewhat nocturnal, evocative mood of the whole piece. Quiet ending (drink!).

I like this concerto a lot. It's concise, it doesn't try to do too much, it just has a load of fun with the moodiness a soprano sax is capable of. At times, the sax gets low enough to sound like a cor anglais. At other times, it dabbles in harsh sonic effects that seem to pierce the microphones. Thankfully there's not too much of that, just enough to give the piece some eerie shadows every so often. This is definitely not a grand statement - just an intriguing, delightful surprise that would be quite interesting on any chamber orchestra program.

The Quintet was written to accompany Mozart's on a concert program, since there are few works for this combination. (Wind quintet minus flute plus piano.) This, too, starts with a slow, evocative intro with long, breathing melodies. Although the music is almost totally unlike Mozart, I will claim one resemblance, which is the "clean" transparency of the textures and seeming simplicity of expression. This is not DSCH successor Aho, spooky horror movie Aho, or new sonic effects Aho. It's good clean tonally curious fun. The second movement is a virtuoso toccata where everyone gets a workout, the third movement is a slow nocturne, and the finale is a "burlesco." It's one of Aho's most formally normal pieces. It even ends loudly! The burlesque is written so that the ending increases to as fast a tempo as possible.

After two pieces of about 25 minutes each written in 2013-14, we travel back in time 40 years for Solo I, the first in Aho's series of 10ish minute solo instrumental pieces. This one's for violin, with the late Jaakko Kuusisto doing the honors in the CD's encore piece. Knowing of Kuusisto's recent passing, it's tempting to see this as a memoriam piece, even though it's now 50 years old. It is mournful, initially very slow and somber, then breaking out into despair - almost like stages of grief. There are even weeping effects around 4:30. I think there is probably a way in which this is a theme-and-variations, though I only recognized the shape, not the theme.

This CD makes an unusual program - two rather light, atmospheric, charming works featuring woodwinds, followed by a short, dour violin solo - but it also does a decent job introducing you to all the sides of Aho as an artist.



This is a favorite of mine. Aho was commissioned to compose an entire chamber orchestral program, from start to finish, and responded with these three works: a cycle of Neruda songs (translated into Finnish) for mezzo and orchestra, a viola concerto, and a symphony for chamber orchestra and augmented percussion. 24, 24, and 30 minutes respectively.

The Book of Questions showcases Aho's gift for vocal writing, which is also often apparent in his woodwind writing. This piece features clear textures, gorgeous sparse accompaniments, and orchestral instruments playing solos behind the singer, Monica Groop. (Groop speaks, not sings, the first poem.) Songs flow into each other without pause in a dream state, so the overall effect is less like Richard Strauss and more like Rautavaara. The last song is a mix of sung and spoken. It's all lovely, sensitive, music; if one could complain, one could say it is perhaps too thoughtful - 24 minutes of music stripped down to minimum, without "special effects." Better to listen in your living room on a rainy day than to see live, perhaps. Unless you know the poetry and can understand and engage with the words in concert.

The Viola Concerto begins without break on the same note on which Book of Questions ended. (I guess Aho didn't believe in applause between works.) It wastes no time establishing a different mood, setting the viola's opening melody against pounding, rolling timpani. After a pretty furious, eruptive first half, the music starts to settle down, gradually sagging until the viola's long, meditative cadenza. Then the finale brings another outburst, highlighted by percussion instruments in contest with the violist. This allegretto - which shares a rhythmic underpinning with the finale of Prokofiev's Fifth - drives the music to a decisive, loud conclusion. Then we can take an intermission!

Symphony No. 14 starts with drumming, a way of echoing and evoking the Viola Concerto without following on directly from it. Aho was thinking about these kinds of metamorphoses when he devised the program to be played together. Here the drums are new: the darabuka, an Arabic instrument which, along with gongs and the African djembe, will expand the sound picture. (Aho says he was getting bored of Western drums and finds these more expressive.) The basic structure is four larger movements where the drummer kicks up a mood with his/her drumming, interspersed with two interludes without percussion.

It's a mystical, ritualistic piece full of alternating moods, with regular drumbeats of different kinds powering the narrative forward or bringing it to a stop. It feels episodic, primitive, contemplative, maybe a little more tranquil than the opening would lead you to think. The last episode enters an almost trance-like meditative state as the drumming fades out to quiet (drink!).



Act I, as completed by Aho. This is a load of fun. Aho's touch is evident in some orchestration details - the orchestral piano, xylophone, glockenspiel - but mostly he is amping up dances that Klami already wrote to be wild, Stravinskian, and exuberant. It's weird that a piece called "Whirls", which sounds like a Debussy piece or a Monet painting, is such a riot.

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yet to come: two discs of music for oboe and various accompanists, Symphony No. 15, and the newest release.

[DavidW]

Brian when you're done you should make a tier list!

[relm1]

This is coming out next month.

[Symphonic Addict]

I wonder why his string quartets have been neglected by the record labels. There's only one recording of his String Quartet No. 3 on Finlandia.

[relm1]

I wonder why his string quartets have been neglected by the record labels. There's only one recording of his String Quartet No. 3 on Finlandia.

He was in his mid 20's by the time he completed the first three string quartets, not yet representative of his mature style.  I believe string quartet No. 1 became the first symphony.  He has recently composed a String Quartet No. 4 and No. 5 (both from 2021) though they haven't yet premiered so it's probably just a matter of chamber music isn't front and center of his output, but I bet a cycle could be coming soon.

He's also completed a Symphony No. 18 (2023) too! 

More details here: https://issuu.com/gehrmansmusikforlag/docs/nordic-highlights-02-2023/s/26413304

[Brian]

The Recorder Concerto is a 20-minute piece in a single varied movement, calling for five varieties of recorder (!). It was composed in fall 2020 in lockdown.

The misterioso opening outdoes some of Aho's other mysterious openings - with deep low clarinet, it calls to mind Tchaikovsky's Fifth or Sibelius' First. The recorder enters to introduce faster material; the music has a spooky nature quality to it, like a glacier at night or a haunted forest. During other fast sections, the recorder is used as a rhythm instrument, almost beatboxing. There's not much melodic material or emotional arc here, but it would certainly be fun to see live, with the player frequently trading out instruments and using the recorder to make exotic effects. Lots of interesting imagery. The ending, as ever with Aho, is quiet and rather abrupt.

The Tenor Saxophone Concerto's quiet ending is more exquisitely prepared for, leading out from a solo cadenza where the solo is frequently interrupted by drumming. Maybe it's my own mental associations with the tenor sax, but I can't help thinking there is a jazzy quality to a lot of its rhythm work in this piece. The soloist sounds wonderful, and gets a lot of said rhythmic adventure to play with. Lots of fun here.

The Sonata Concertante for Accordion and Strings is an arrangement/reworking of the sonata for two accordions I wrote about here. One of the parts is taken over by string orchestra, helping to reduce the possible "organ fatigue" weaker-eared listeners might experience    . Actually, the truth is the opposite - in this guise, to my surprise, it sounds rather more sinister, evil, frantic. There is a similarity in the string writing to the Shostakovich/Barshai "chamber symphonies." The final fugue is really clear and skillfully written.

Another release that reveals multiple sides of the composer, while also instilling a slight feeling that maybe those sides are not so variegated as they could be.

[relm1]

The Recorder Concerto is a 20-minute piece in a single varied movement, calling for five varieties of recorder (!). It was composed in fall 2020 in lockdown.

The misterioso opening outdoes some of Aho's other mysterious openings - with deep low clarinet, it calls to mind Tchaikovsky's Fifth or Sibelius' First. The recorder enters to introduce faster material; the music has a spooky nature quality to it, like a glacier at night or a haunted forest. During other fast sections, the recorder is used as a rhythm instrument, almost beatboxing. There's not much melodic material or emotional arc here, but it would certainly be fun to see live, with the player frequently trading out instruments and using the recorder to make exotic effects. Lots of interesting imagery. The ending, as ever with Aho, is quiet and rather abrupt.

The Tenor Saxophone Concerto's quiet ending is more exquisitely prepared for, leading out from a solo cadenza where the solo is frequently interrupted by drumming. Maybe it's my own mental associations with the tenor sax, but I can't help thinking there is a jazzy quality to a lot of its rhythm work in this piece. The soloist sounds wonderful, and gets a lot of said rhythmic adventure to play with. Lots of fun here.

The Sonata Concertante for Accordion and Strings is an arrangement/reworking of the sonata for two accordions I wrote about here. One of the parts is taken over by string orchestra, helping to reduce the possible "organ fatigue" weaker-eared listeners might experience    . Actually, the truth is the opposite - in this guise, to my surprise, it sounds rather more sinister, evil, frantic. There is a similarity in the string writing to the Shostakovich/Barshai "chamber symphonies." The final fugue is really clear and skillfully written.

Another release that reveals multiple sides of the composer, while also instilling a slight feeling that maybe those sides are not so variegated as they could be.

I enjoyed this release.  Notable that it wasn't as manic as some of his earlier works, here there is a sense of mystery and almost reverence.  It's not a loud disc but is more introspective which I enjoyed. 

[Brian]

The Oboe Quintet is a rather pleasant surprise - I don't know much music for this instrumentation at all, but it kind of does follow on in the tradition of, say, the Brahms clarinet quintet, but for oboe. Actually, a better stylistic point of comparison might be that moment about 6 minutes into the first movement of Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony, where you know trouble is about to erupt, but the tempo is slowing down slightly and the climax hasn't quite begun yet. The music is cast in two movements of about 15 minutes each, and they broadly start out slowly with long-lined melodies and then accelerate into wild, wooly, scratchy climaxes full of vigor. The quintet overall ends with quite a long oboe cadenza that lowers the temperature and returns to the more lyrical beginning mood, and there is no string cadence to round things off: the oboe trails off into silence alone. The musical language is not exactly romantic, but it's also not as austere as many of Aho's other works.

Next up comes a 16-minute suite of miniatures, Seven Inventions and Postlude, for oboe and cello. This is a duo I've never heard playing together before, and the "inventions" (mostly at moderate-to-slow tempos) are unpretentious, experimental-feeling little pieces. Each instrument gets one solo by itself.

Compared to the two previous works, the Quintet for Flute, Oboe, Violin, Viola, and Cello is much tougher stuff. It announces its intentions right away, as all the instruments play high-pitched tones that are very close together but not in unison or a traditional chord. It has a little bit of a nails-on-chalkboard effect. Eventually the music takes on an almost avian quality, fluttering and sending feathers flying all over the place, with wild runs up and down the scales as the tempo increases bit by bit. This being Aho, the climax is reached midway through the piece and then things start to fade down again to a series of soft, melancholy solos for oboe, violin, and then viola. Unexpectedly, the next instrument to take a turn is the piccolo - a reminder of the uncompromising, ear-slashing nature of the work's beginning. This ushers in a section of soft birdsong like figures for the piccolo, oboe, and muted strings, playing repeated rhythmic figures that sound kinda-sorta like you're in a forest. It's a little bit like a zombie apocalypse wiped out all the humans and now only nature remains. That's the interpretation I'm going with. 

Though the piece initially sounded rather ugly and grating, it turned out very interesting, and ultimately this was one of the CDs that for me had the biggest jumps up from my expectation (low) to the reality (fairly high).



Minea is a 19-minute rhapsodic piece written for the Minnesota Orchestra as a virtuosic concert opener on tour. The point is to give everyone a solo and the orchestra to show off its worth on its travels. For Aho, the artistic impetus was to digest Indian raga style and other Eastern musical idioms, and to look at the Western canon from their perspective rather than vice versa. So although there are sounds that are a bit like, say, Rimsky-Korsakov's "eastern" music, or even Bartok's Miraculous Mandarin, the intention is to serve as their reverse. Aho's orchestra tends to more in a more repetitious fashion, absorbing the musical cells in multiple stages. This also enables him to incorporate a variety of instruments and sections discussing the same motifs.

The first 8 minutes could be said to take up one section, since it's all the same material worked through. At 8', the bassoons and hand-played percussion start to take up a variation of this sufficiently different, and faster, to constitute a new section. The drumming begins to underpin the forward drive of the piece, until, at about 16', you have a good idea of the frenzy in which it will end up. You can feel a climax coming, the way you might feel the start of an earthquake. The final frenzy really is something amazing. It's also probably the most "populist" or concert-hall-friendly Aho piece since the Symphonic Dances. Although Minea might have seemed aloof at times early, you can easily imagine a crowd roaring with applause at the end of this one.

From the big and loud whiz-bang ending of that piece, we transport ourselves to a much more traditionally Ahoian (Aholic?) sound world at the beginning of the Double Bass Concerto. As he often does, he starts with questioning, enigmatic woodwinds searching for a melody. The orchestra is much smaller, allowing the bassist to be kept in balance - and allowing him, also, to play quite low notes a lot of the time. Don't listen to this piece if your environment has a lot of ambient background noise. The big orchestral outbursts involving tuba, timpani, etc. tend to only set up the stage for double bass features afterwards. There are two cadenzas: one all pizzicato, strumming like a jazz bassist (joined by occasional harp licks), the other bowed, with sparse accompaniment, and 'misterioso.' (Aho's favorite marking?)

The scherzo has a really wonderful atmosphere, with a fluttery, shimmering texture over an insistent rhythm. Here the bass see-saws its way from the bottom to top of its scale, reminiscent of the orchestra see-sawing upwards at the end of the slow movement in Martinu's Third Symphony. The final movement has some interesting stuff and gradually fades out to a quiet ending (drink!).

Overall, this piece - like many of the "weird instrument" concertos - feels more like an intellectual exercise in sound creation rather than an emotional journey or extroverted piece. I like a lot of individual episodes, but don't think I would have been super invested or compelled if watching it live.

Symphony No. 15 is the most recent to be recorded, but Aho is up to 18 as of 2023. The movement indications are interesting:
I. Nebbia ("Fog")
II. Musica bizzarra
III. Interludio
IV. Musica strana ("Strange music")
By setting out four movements with specific markings, Aho seems to be marking this as a comparatively traditional symphony. But two of the movements are bizarre and strange!

The fog immediately asserts itself. The string section moves like a silvery alien mass, greeted by chiming bells. There are definitely some thunder claps to be heard in the fog, foreshadowing the music's eventual mood in a louder direction. An oboe solo leads directly into "musica bizzarra," a nocturnal landscape of curlicued woodwind solos that kind of sounds like something from a late Mahler symphony, complete with sarcastic muted trumpet commentary. As with the previous movement, drumming becomes more prominent and relevant through the movement, along with occasional allusions to the 'DSCH' motif.

The interludio privileges more ghostly sounds, mainly provided by the celesta. The strings return for the finale, a 10-minute piece that like Minea builds up gradually to a big, loud, whiz-bang ending. Its strangeness apparently comes from the number of opposing ideas set up against each other, including fanfares and cymbal crashes and chugging rhythms. I really like the buildup to the ending, the sort of fakeout handoff to a piccolo solo, and then the sudden brutal conclusion. It's a bit like the goofy twist ending of Mahler 7, the second time I've thought of Mahler 7 while listening to this piece. For most listeners, the comparison will not be obvious at all, of course. But this is a big, extroverted, weird, interesting, fun, colorful, extroverted, polarizing statement. I'll have to see how it holds up on a return visit.

[relm1]

The Oboe Quintet is a rather pleasant surprise - I don't know much music for this instrumentation at all, but it kind of does follow on in the tradition of, say, the Brahms clarinet quintet, but for oboe. Actually, a better stylistic point of comparison might be that moment about 6 minutes into the first movement of Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony, where you know trouble is about to erupt, but the tempo is slowing down slightly and the climax hasn't quite begun yet. The music is cast in two movements of about 15 minutes each, and they broadly start out slowly with long-lined melodies and then accelerate into wild, wooly, scratchy climaxes full of vigor. The quintet overall ends with quite a long oboe cadenza that lowers the temperature and returns to the more lyrical beginning mood, and there is no string cadence to round things off: the oboe trails off into silence alone. The musical language is not exactly romantic, but it's also not as austere as many of Aho's other works.

Next up comes a 16-minute suite of miniatures, Seven Inventions and Postlude, for oboe and cello. This is a duo I've never heard playing together before, and the "inventions" (mostly at moderate-to-slow tempos) are unpretentious, experimental-feeling little pieces. Each instrument gets one solo by itself.

Compared to the two previous works, the Quintet for Flute, Oboe, Violin, Viola, and Cello is much tougher stuff. It announces its intentions right away, as all the instruments play high-pitched tones that are very close together but not in unison or a traditional chord. It has a little bit of a nails-on-chalkboard effect. Eventually the music takes on an almost avian quality, fluttering and sending feathers flying all over the place, with wild runs up and down the scales as the tempo increases bit by bit. This being Aho, the climax is reached midway through the piece and then things start to fade down again to a series of soft, melancholy solos for oboe, violin, and then viola. Unexpectedly, the next instrument to take a turn is the piccolo - a reminder of the uncompromising, ear-slashing nature of the work's beginning. This ushers in a section of soft birdsong like figures for the piccolo, oboe, and muted strings, playing repeated rhythmic figures that sound kinda-sorta like you're in a forest. It's a little bit like a zombie apocalypse wiped out all the humans and now only nature remains. That's the interpretation I'm going with. 

Though the piece initially sounded rather ugly and grating, it turned out very interesting, and ultimately this was one of the CDs that for me had the biggest jumps up from my expectation (low) to the reality (fairly high).



Minea is a 19-minute rhapsodic piece written for the Minnesota Orchestra as a virtuosic concert opener on tour. The point is to give everyone a solo and the orchestra to show off its worth on its travels. For Aho, the artistic impetus was to digest Indian raga style and other Eastern musical idioms, and to look at the Western canon from their perspective rather than vice versa. So although there are sounds that are a bit like, say, Rimsky-Korsakov's "eastern" music, or even Bartok's Miraculous Mandarin, the intention is to serve as their reverse. Aho's orchestra tends to more in a more repetitious fashion, absorbing the musical cells in multiple stages. This also enables him to incorporate a variety of instruments and sections discussing the same motifs.

The first 8 minutes could be said to take up one section, since it's all the same material worked through. At 8', the bassoons and hand-played percussion start to take up a variation of this sufficiently different, and faster, to constitute a new section. The drumming begins to underpin the forward drive of the piece, until, at about 16', you have a good idea of the frenzy in which it will end up. You can feel a climax coming, the way you might feel the start of an earthquake. The final frenzy really is something amazing. It's also probably the most "populist" or concert-hall-friendly Aho piece since the Symphonic Dances. Although Minea might have seemed aloof at times early, you can easily imagine a crowd roaring with applause at the end of this one.

From the big and loud whiz-bang ending of that piece, we transport ourselves to a much more traditionally Ahoian (Aholic?) sound world at the beginning of the Double Bass Concerto. As he often does, he starts with questioning, enigmatic woodwinds searching for a melody. The orchestra is much smaller, allowing the bassist to be kept in balance - and allowing him, also, to play quite low notes a lot of the time. Don't listen to this piece if your environment has a lot of ambient background noise. The big orchestral outbursts involving tuba, timpani, etc. tend to only set up the stage for double bass features afterwards. There are two cadenzas: one all pizzicato, strumming like a jazz bassist (joined by occasional harp licks), the other bowed, with sparse accompaniment, and 'misterioso.' (Aho's favorite marking?)

The scherzo has a really wonderful atmosphere, with a fluttery, shimmering texture over an insistent rhythm. Here the bass see-saws its way from the bottom to top of its scale, reminiscent of the orchestra see-sawing upwards at the end of the slow movement in Martinu's Third Symphony. The final movement has some interesting stuff and gradually fades out to a quiet ending (drink!).

Overall, this piece - like many of the "weird instrument" concertos - feels more like an intellectual exercise in sound creation rather than an emotional journey or extroverted piece. I like a lot of individual episodes, but don't think I would have been super invested or compelled if watching it live.

Symphony No. 15 is the most recent to be recorded, but Aho is up to 18 as of 2023. The movement indications are interesting:
I. Nebbia ("Fog")
II. Musica bizzarra
III. Interludio
IV. Musica strana ("Strange music")
By setting out four movements with specific markings, Aho seems to be marking this as a comparatively traditional symphony. But two of the movements are bizarre and strange!

The fog immediately asserts itself. The string section moves like a silvery alien mass, greeted by chiming bells. There are definitely some thunder claps to be heard in the fog, foreshadowing the music's eventual mood in a louder direction. An oboe solo leads directly into "musica bizzarra," a nocturnal landscape of curlicued woodwind solos that kind of sounds like something from a late Mahler symphony, complete with sarcastic muted trumpet commentary. As with the previous movement, drumming becomes more prominent and relevant through the movement, along with occasional allusions to the 'DSCH' motif.

The interludio privileges more ghostly sounds, mainly provided by the celesta. The strings return for the finale, a 10-minute piece that like Minea builds up gradually to a big, loud, whiz-bang ending. Its strangeness apparently comes from the number of opposing ideas set up against each other, including fanfares and cymbal crashes and chugging rhythms. I really like the buildup to the ending, the sort of fakeout handoff to a piccolo solo, and then the sudden brutal conclusion. It's a bit like the goofy twist ending of Mahler 7, the second time I've thought of Mahler 7 while listening to this piece. For most listeners, the comparison will not be obvious at all, of course. But this is a big, extroverted, weird, interesting, fun, colorful, extroverted, polarizing statement. I'll have to see how it holds up on a return visit.

I missed this album but your write up has piqued my curiosity on it so will listen today.

[Brian]

The very last post in my Ahodyssey! (Until the next release in the series is published...)



The Oboe Concerto of 2007 dates from a time when Aho was looking for new frameworks to look at tonality and seeking answers in Arabic musical scales. Thus the first movement's long, slow lament with achingly gorgeous oboe melodies sounds a lot like certain Middle Eastern moods. Two orchestral cor anglais echo many of the oboist's solo lines.

It's an immediately atmospheric, gripping opening - the kind of thing I am a total sucker for. Soft, misty strings, floating soloist with an emotionally expressive big tune, gradual buildup to a more tense atmosphere. It's a passionate movement. Then we get a Presto scherzo-type movement with lots of Arabic percussion. The oboe squawks a bit but mostly dances, and the atmosphere here is again very convincing. The oboist gets a chance to relax during a short interlude after this, where Aho experiments with what other orchestral sections can do in his chosen tonal range and gently melancholy/nostalgic mood. Then the oboe soloist gets a three-minute cadenza that leads into an Andante finale. This finale starts with a surprisingly romantic, almost Hollywoody vision - horns softly intoning a melody, Arabic percussion pattering gently, the violins soaring upwards. It's sunrise in the desert. As is so typical of Aho, the mood gradually returns to the lament of the concerto's beginning, with tension gradually rising again. The finale is slow, but exciting enough not to feel it. In fact, almost all this concerto is slow, taking advantage of the oboe's strengths.

There's a loud ending, too. It all feels much more "conventional" than the usual Aho concerto in form - but not in the tonal language itself. As a person with romantic leanings and Middle Eastern family roots, I was perfectly set up to love this piece. It shoots right up to the top of my list of favorite Aho.

Solo IX is much harder to digest. Aho's Soli are all about 10 minutes and all designed to push the instruments to technical extremes. In this case, that means the oboist is asked to perform lots of transitions from traditional technique into what I can only describe as car alarm imitations  . Midway through the soloist gets to perform some more lyrical, slow material before the recapitulation. All in all this is quite a test of strength, stamina, breathing, and ability to make odd noises. Piet van Bockstal is really extraordinary.

The Oboe Sonata is a much earlier work, from the mid-1980s. It is by far the most abstract work on the album, full of spikes and stabbing chords and repeated notes and unusual effects. Aho describes the work as a battle between the pure tones of conventional oboe playing and the "impure" effects he achieves by other means; the third-movement climax is a pitched battle which is won by traditional "pure" oboe playing so the soloist doesn't have to do any more car alarm screeches in the finale. In fact, it seems to find a measure of peace and tranquility as it fades into softness.

And now it's time for the very last thing on my Ahodyssey...



Perhaps most widely appreciated and discussed as a masterpiece, the Flute Concerto has been advocated by Sharon Bezaly all over the world. It's all about atmosphere, pretty perfectly encapsulated by the cover of the atmosphere. Without ever really betraying a clear "point" or dramatic arc, the music manages to move forward effortlessly, make time stand still - whatever your favorite metaphor. Using two flutes, he really fully exploits the coloristic potential of the instrument. I think I've known this piece too long and too well to describe it as surgically/analytically as many of the other works in the Ahodyssey. I don't know if it remains my ultimate favorite.

Ranking seems foolish, but I can at least create some tiers now. Personal and subjective, of course!

Definite Favorites
Flute Concerto
French Horn Concerto
Mussorgsky Songs
Oboe Concerto
Preludes for solo piano (19)
Soprano Saxophone Concerto
Symphonies Nos. 9, 11
Triple Concerto (violin, cello, piano)

Very Interesting
Bassoon Concerto
The Book of Questions
Cello Concerto No. 2
Clarinet Concerto
Contrabassoon Concerto
Double Concerto (cor anglais and harp)
Quintet for alto sax, bassoon, viola, cello, and double bass
Symphonies Nos. 2, 3, 12, 15
Tenor Saxophone Concerto
Theremin Concerto
Trumpet Concerto
Viola Concerto
Wind Quintets Nos. 1 and 2

Tough to Chew On, but Worth It
Cello Concerto No. 1
Chamber Symphonies Nos. 1-3
Oboe Sonata
Piano Sonata Nos. 1 and 2
Quintet for flute, oboe, violin, viola, and cello
Rejoicing of the Deep Waters
Sonata for Two Accordions
Symphony No. 5

More Populist, but Not in a Bad Way
Bassoon Quintet
Chinese Songs
Clarinet Quintet
Minea
Quintet for clarinet, oboe, bassoon, French horn, and piano
Recorder Concerto
Symphonic Dances
Symphony No. 4 (just because it is so much in the tradition of Shostakovich)
Symphony No. 13
Timpani Concerto
Trombone Concerto

For the Real Aho Lover
Oboe Quintet
Piano Concertos Nos. 1 and 2
Piano miniatures written for young players
Prelude, Toccata, and Postlude for cello and piano
Seven Inventions and Postlude for cello and oboe
Sieidi
Sonata Concertante for Accordion and Strings
Symphonies Nos. 1, 8, 10
Trio for Clarinet, Viola, and Piano
Violin Concerto No. 2

Not for Me
Double Bass Concerto
Music for solo violin
Pergamon
Silence
Symphony No. 7
Tuba Concerto
Violin Concerto

[relm1]

That's an impressive traversal!

[lordlance]

Thanks for the list, @Brian. Definitely appreciate it. 

[Pohjolas Daughter]

@Brian Thanks for mentioning that flute concerto.  I found it uploaded by Naxos of America on youtube and have just put it on (I believe that the whole work is there).

Have you listened to the other works on that CD (or did you stream it)?

PD

[Brian]

@Brian Thanks for mentioning that flute concerto.  I found it uploaded by Naxos of America on youtube and have just put it on (I believe that the whole work is there).

Have you listened to the other works on that CD (or did you stream it)?

PD

Yes but it has been a long time! I don't have much memory of them but Hurwitz says the Icelandic piece is more abstract and less melodic but very interesting, and the Christian Lindberg piece is kind of a Warhol "pop art" mashup of different styles.

[Symphonic Addict]

At last! I was missing this part of his output for long. To be released on December 13th: