Rautavaara: Cantus Articus; Piano Concerto; Symphony No. 3
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Composer: Einojuhani RautavaaraConductor: Hannu Lintu
Orchestra: Royal Scottish National Orchestra
Performer: Laura Mikkola
Edition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 1999-03-09
Music Label: Naxos
Soundtracks:
- Cantus Arcticus, Op. 61 (Concerto for Birds and Orchestra): Suo (The Marsh)
- Cantus Arcticus, Op. 61 (Concerto for Birds and Orchestra): Melankolia (Melancholy)
- Cantus Arcticus, Op. 61 (Concerto for Birds and Orchestra): Joutsenet muuttavat (Swans Migrating)
- Piano Concerto No. 1, Op. 45.: Con grandezza
- Piano Concerto No. 1, Op. 45.: Andante (ma rubato)
- Piano Concerto No. 1, Op. 45.: Molto vivace
- Symphony No. 3, Op. 20.: Langsam, breit, ruhig
- Symphony No. 3, Op. 20.: Langsam, doch nicht schleppend
- Symphony No. 3, Op. 20.: Sehr schnell
- Symphony No. 3, Op. 20.: Bewegt
Music reviews of Rautavaara: Cantus Articus; Piano Concerto; Symphony No. 3
Music Review: The most accessible postmodern music I've ever heard!
Rating: 5 Stars
This album has been revelatory to me, and I came by its existence quite by accident. Had I relied on my "usual sources" - music critics and reviewers in the trade press - I would surely still be without it. It came highly recommended by friends at a music chat room (the Classical Music Forum at the N. Y. Times website), and I pass this recommendation on to all browsers who happen across this review.
Einojuhani Rautavaara may well turn out to be a, if not the most, significant composer in the last quarter century. Hand-picked by Jean Sibelius to be his successor, Rautavaara came to the U.S. to study at Julliard and to rub elbows with the likes of Copland, Persichetti and others. He then went on to study at the Darmstadt School, all the while building an early repertoire. If the thought of the Darmstadt School, and its preoccupation with serialism, sounds offputting, permit me to put your mind at ease.
The three pieces on this album represent Rautavaara at perhaps early mid-career, covering the period from about 1960 to 1972. (He is still actively - and happily - composing, having recently attended the premiere of his 8th Symphony in Philadelphia.)
Cantus Arcticus ("Concerto for Birds and Orchestra") is by far his best-known work, and receives an excellent performance here. In performance notes, he wrote "Think of autumn and Tchaikovsky." The result is nonetheless strikingly different. The birds, all species whose habitat is the Arctic region of Finland, are compelling factored in as musicians in their own right, with the woodwinds frequently imitating them. This is the most Sibelius-like of the three pieces on the album, and in fact is quite different than the bird music of Messiaen, or the work of Hovhaness that includes whale sounds. I found it to be immediately accessible and moving, more in the vein of Paul Winter's works that successfully integrate such fauna sounds, in its direct, simple and noble appeal. But I think that there is a much better performance of this piece to be found on BIS CD-1098, with Osmo Vänska leading the Lahti Symphony Orchestra and utilizing the composer's revised tape recording of the birds, which is significantly more effective than the one on this recording.
The Piano Concerto No. 1 is, in a word, dazzling. The first movement, full of grand gestures somewhat reminiscent of the Prokofiev 1st, is full of tone clusters obtained by using both the fist and the forearm. The result is a dizzying "struggle for consonance" that, rather than falling harshly on the ears, is instead thoroughly delightful; the dissonances are delicious, if such a term may be used for tone clusters. The brief final movement seems to pull together Prokofiev, Bernstein's "Age of Anxiety" (on speed) and Messiaen's "Turangalila-Symphonie." If this description (which is a personal "read" of mine) suggests eclecticism, it should be said that the result is uniquely Rautavaara. And the pianist, Laura Mikkola, provides a stunningly virtuosic performance.
The Symphony No. 3 (which Rautavaara notes is the synthesis of the romanticism of his 1st Symphony and the serialism of his 2nd Symphony) unabashedly and unapologetically looks back at Bruckner (complete even to the incorporation of 4 Wagner tubas in the scoring). The reference to Bruckner's "Romantic Symphony" is clear, beginning with the string tremolos and massed brasses in the first movement. That the music is built entirely on tone rows might well go unnoticed by the listener; the craft that Rautavaara has at his fingertips is quite remarkable and the result is anything but "serial" in the usual sense of the term. The second movement brings Howard Hanson's own Romantic Symphony to mind. Had Hanson lived a decade or so longer, it would have been interesting to hear how he might have grappled with tone rows; perhaps he might well have ended up writing in a similar idiom. The third movement recalls Nielsen as much as anyone. The final movement brings us back once again to Bruckner, and, latterly, Hanson: Just before a hushed - and totally satisfying - close, the massed brass once again traverse a rather astounding peroration of modulations that remind us that Bruckner had trod this path as a groundbreaker a century earlier, and that Hanson as well had done similar boldly chromatic things at the close of his own Romantic Symphony. If all of this comes across as little more than a pastiche, let me summarize the work in this way: It is a big, bold and totally accessible dodecaphonic Romantic Symphony. Seemingly an oxymoronic statement. But that, I am now finding, is part of the magic of Rautavaara.
This budget Naxos album is a perfect starting point for exploring Rautavaara's captivating and often exhilarating music. It has led me to explore his music much more thoroughly, and I hope that it does for you as well.
Bob Zeidler
Description of Rautavaara: Cantus Articus; Piano Concerto; Symphony No. 3
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