Jorma Hynninen and Paivi Nisula star in this Finish National Opera performance of the Sallinen opera conducted by Mikko Franck and directed by Pekka Milonoff. Also included are interviews with Sallinen, Milonoff, Franck, and Hynninen.

20TH CENTURY MUSIC FOR FLUTE AND ORCHESTRA

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Sallinen, A.: Kuningas Lahtee Ranskaan (The King Goes Forth

Aulis Sallinen and his slightly older contemporary Einojuhani Rautavaara (b. 1928) are currently the grand old men of Finnish music and have been taking turns in the limelight for some time. Sallinen had an opera performed at Covent Garden in the 1980s, while Rautavaara’s breakthrough work, his seventh symphony, Angel of Light, came in 1994. They have each written eight symphonies – and it is as important for a Nordic composer to get beyond seven, because Sibelius didn’t, as it is for one in the German tradition to reach nine, because Beethoven did. A box of Rautavaara’s symphonies came out in 2009 (review) and one of Sallinen’s in 2011. Sallinen has a wide stylistic range, with dance music and jazz at one end and hard-edged modernism at the other. His music is predominantly tonal: he can write lyrically and rhythmically. Sometimes his idiom seems like a slightly more astringent version of Benjamin Britten, and there are occasional reminiscences of other composers. But he has his own flavour, which you learn to recognize.

Now we have a complete set of Sallinen’s Chamber Music series. These are not actually works of chamber music but works for chamber orchestra, all but the first for one or more solo instruments with a string orchestra. They are therefore direct successors to Hindemith’s Kammermusik series, though unlike those works these were written over a period of over thirty years. A more distant ancestor would be Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos. The solo parts mostly eschew virtuosity. The works are mostly in a single movement, though often in several sections and they are of moderate length, so the whole set – assuming Sallinen does not intend to add to it – fits onto two CDs. Although some of them have been recorded before this is the first complete set.

Chamber Music I begins in a haze from which fragments emerge leading to a melody which climbs out of clinging textures. It achieves some rhythmic definition featuring Scotch snaps before withdrawing into the mist. There is a serene coda with a beautiful tune. This is the nearest to modernism of the whole set.

Chamber Music II features an alto flute as soloist, which immediately leads one to ask why this lovely instrument is not used more often as a concerto soloist. After an exploratory opening this becomes a gentle dance. A middle section has an extended solo, not really a cadenza, and a slow polonaise. There is a short, quick finale. Of all these works this reminded me most of Britten: it could almost be the flute concerto he did not get round to writing.

After this gentle work, Chamber Music III is a riot. The title is suggestive but there is no formal programme. It is a dialogue between solo cello – enchantingly played by Arto Noras – and string orchestra in which the soloist tries to teach the orchestra some jolly dance tunes – Sallinen played in a dance band in his youth. The orchestra is at first uncomprehending but gets the knack of it but by then the soloist has moved on. I particularly enjoyed the tango section. Later, an accompanied cadenza leads to a moto perpetuo which is repeatedly interrupted before suddenly fading out.

In contrast, Chamber Music IV is a rather sombre and questioning piano concerto in four short movements. It goes back via an earlier version to a solo cello work which was the original Elegy for Sebastian Knight. The Real Life of Sebastian Knight is a novel by Vladimir Nabokov which apparently inspired Sallinen, but not having read it I can’t explore how. The idiom here struck me as rather like Hindemith but with sudden and disconcerting pauses. I liked this work a lot: it is limpid and lyrical and with a strange wondering beauty. The piano part is not virtuosic and indeed is often in single notes.

Chamber Music V is also a piano concerto, this time based on an earlier version in which the solo instrument was an accordion, and also related to another work titled Barabbas Dialogues. This is a melancholy work with an opening featuring trills which reminded me of Scriabin’s tenth piano sonata. Indeed, something of the flickering texture of that work appears here, and builds up an atmosphere of great anxiety with repeated notes and rhythms. There are momentary reminiscences of works as disparate as Scriabin’s last two sonatas, Bach, and the Spanish music of Albeniz and Granados. In a slow middle section there is a suggestion of jazz. The final section starts as a toccata but ends in doubt and uncertainty. It is a strange and haunting work.

Chamber Music VI is for solo string quartet and string orchestra, the same combination which Elgar used in his Introduction and Allegro and also Schoenberg in one of his reworkings of a baroque concerto. Sallinen’s piece is not like either. It is titled 3 invitations au voyage but the implied reference to Baudelaire’s poem or Duparc’s setting thereof is not borne out by anything I can hear. Imagine the string writing of Sibelius tinged with Bartók, though this cannot really convey the character of this music, which also has a yearning chromaticism which is all Sallinen’s own. Towards the end the mood lifts but the sense of tension remains. It is an eloquent, poignant work.

Chamber Music VII features a solo wind quintet, here, as in the previous work, played by an established group. It is a cheerful work, rather in the French tradition of Poulenc and his contemporaries. Each wind instrument gets a chance to shine. I particularly enjoyed the oboe of Nahoko Kinoshita and the clarinet of Gocho Prakov. There are some quiet, contemplative passage but these are graceful rather than poignant. It is an attractive work though perhaps too episodic to be wholly coherent.

Chamber Music VIII is another cello concerto. It is a much more serious work than Chamber Music III. It is subtitled The Trees, All Their Green, which was the title of a volume of poems by Paavo Haavikko, who also wrote the plays on which two of Sallinen’s operas were based. He died just as Sallinen was beginning work on this piece. The solo cello is the protagonist throughout and weaves a lyrical but anguished and intense line. Arto Noras is as superbly expressive here as he was witty and playful in Chamber music III.

I hope I have given a sense of the expressive range and variety of these eight works. I had already started exploring Sallinen’s symphonies, thanks to the complete set I mentioned, and have been very glad to get to know this series as well. The performances under both Ville Matvejeff and Ralf Gothóni are accomplished and the soloists play with great commitment and style. The recording is clear and unobtrusive, and there is a helpful sleeve-note, in English and Finnish only. We owe a debt to the Finnish Music Foundation which sponsored these recordings.

– MusicWeb International (Stephen Barber)

One of the most internationally well-known of Finnish composers, Aulis Sallinen (b. 1935) will celebrate his 80th birthday in 2015. In tribute, Ondine is releasing on DVD the 2002 production of his latest opera, King Lear, with the same cast that premiered the work at the Finnish National Opera in 2000. Under the direction of Okko Kamu and featuring a strong cast of singers, the work’s premiere was a great success. Legendary Finnish bass Matti Salminen sings the title role of King Lear; other singers include Lilli Paasikivi, Taina Piira, Satu Vihavainen, Petri Lindroos, Kai Pitkänen, Jorma Hynninen, Sauli Tiilikainen and Jorma Silvasti. The libretto, based on the world-famous Shakespearian tragedy, tells the tragic story of the English king Lear and his struggles with members of his own family, his enemies, and his developing madness.

A fine, virile and far from effete imaginative contribution to the two centuries in which this music was created.

Aulis Sallinen is a characterful composer, but these five discs leave open the question of whether or not he’s a true symphonist. The first three symphonies thrive on instrumental color and fascinating, often percussive sonorities. The Fourth seemed to be pointing in a new direction, but the Fifth and Sixth turned out to be episodic, even static. The Seventh, after Tolkien, returns to Sallinen’s coloristic roots to excellent effect (it was based on music for a projected ballet), while the Eighth has marvelous passages but a curiously unsatisfying conclusion.

The concertos (for violin, cello, and horn) are all excellent pieces, and so are most of the shorter works—Chorali and especially Shadows, which revisits music from the opera The King Goes Forth to France and contains one of the most haunting tunes in any contemporary work. Make no mistake: the music is personal, approachable, and atmospheric, and the performances uniformly splendid. Sallinen is well worth getting to know, but if you’re looking to sample, try to find the single disc containing Symphonies 1, 7, A Solemn Overture, and Chorali, and move on from there.

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

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Which of Sallinen’s works/recordings made you mark his name for further exploration? For me it involved a Swedish LP and a radio broadcast. The album is predictable enough. It was the pioneering BIS-LP-41 of symphonies 1 and 3 (Okko Kamu) and Chorali (Paavo Berglund). The broadcast was of a performance of the stunning Cello Concerto by Arto Noras who already interested me because he had recorded with smoking fervour the Bliss Cello Concerto for EMI and the Klami Cheremissian Fantasy for Finnlevy.

Things moved on from there. My interest increased in this Finnish composer from a generation born two decades before Sibelius’s death. He was modern yet definitely not a swooning post-romantic. His music was characterised by stubborn heroics, discontinuous triumphs, terse, expressive ideas and a real lyrical proclivity. Crucial discoveries for me included hearing his Dies Irae broadcast from the Three Choirs in 1981, Shadows conducted by Bryden Thomson and the first UK performance of the Violin Concerto in 1982 with the BBC Scottish and Maurice Handford conducting. In 1986 I encountered Symphonies Nos. 2 and 4 with the BBC Welsh Symphony Orchestra again directed by Thomson in 1986. I was hooked. The barb became more deeply embedded with Finlandia’s Meet the Composer volume (8573-81972-2 - issued 1997) which presented the truly magnificent and very memorable Cello Concerto (Noras) and Symphonies 4 and 5 (Saraste and Kamu) among other things. That Warner label 2 CD set just pre-dated the launch of MusicWeb International. I have previously reviewed several of the five Sallinen orchestral discs issued by CPO and have been more than impressed by this Rasilainen-conducted set.

The present Edition is the only game in town. There is nothing comparable. All eight symphonies are there, three concertos and clutch of smaller orchestral works. It’s a substantial set assembling five separately issued CDs released between 2002 and 2007 and housing them in a card sheath. The price ranges between £30 and £40 on Amazon representing some saving on the individual discs. The vertebra of these discs is Sallinen’s entire eight symphonies. The ‘missing’ concertos are the ones for flute (1995), violin, piano and chamber orchestra (2005), clarinet, viola (variant clarinet, cello) and orchestra (2007-8) and cor anglais (2010); all in due time though the flute concerto has been available on Naxos 8.554185 for quite some time.

I will not comment on every work featured beyond saying that this set of discs evinces a serious and brilliantly executed intent. This was evidently a project that mattered greatly. Its presence on the market should be capitalised on by all enthusiasts iof this composer and of Finnish music and indeed of 20 ^th century music at large.

Cellular construction and iterative development of ideas are Sallinen hallmarks. These are apparent in the tense Fourth Symphony which also makes distinctive use of bells and percussion. Other broadly referenced moments link with Arnold, Prokofiev and Alan Hovhaness – especially the tumultuously baleful brass writing in the Vishnu symphony. The single movement Second Symphony is less successful as a symphony than its extraordinary flankers (symphonies 1 and 3 first recorded by Kamu on Bis). It sports a wide spectrum percussion array: marimba, vibraphone, crotales, tom-toms, bongos, Chinese temple blocks and gongs, military drum, side drum, suspended cymbal and large tam-tam.

The Horn Concerto is subtitled Bells and Arias. It is classic Sallinen material with its frank lyric qualities, especially in the central movement, completely liberated by the decade's acceptance of melodic material. The horn sings autumnally as well as rasping and abrading in Britten-style fanfares. Everything is presented with a lucidity that is unafraid to reveal the work’s wonderfully engaging building blocks.

Mauermusik or Wall Music was written in Köln in 1962. It is to the memory of a young East German who was shot to death for attempting to cross the Berlin Wall into the West. The work was premiered in 1964, not by Berglund, but by Ulf Söderblom in Helsinki. Written before Sallinen fully found his own voice and amid a dominant atonal conformity, this is a moving and desolate piece that, in its string writing recalls, the Penderecki of the 1960s. This is not the Sallinen we know but a young composer paying his dues to the norms of the time.

The steely silvery awe of Shadows has a wandering Sibelian bass which transforms into a billowing cannonade of vehemently threatening sound. Symphony No. 8 – his last - speaks of anxiety-haunted exploration. The opening is spattered with sparse woodblock clatter under an awed brass-led largo. The bell finale is built from the notes of the name of the orchestra ConCErtGEBouw AmstErDAm. The title, Autumnal Fragments, relates to 9/11. The work ends in a calming yet stertorous funereal cortege that finally slides into silence.

Sallinen is also renowned for his operas: The Horseman (1975), The Red Line (1978), The King Goes Forth To France (1983), The Palace (1991-3), Kullervo (1988) and King Lear (1999). Shadows has its origin in The King Goes Forth while The Palace Rhapsody's operatic sources are self-evident. It is scored for winds, percussion, harp and orchestra. It has a more candidly Sibelian tang. This thoughtful, brooding piece lit with flashes of brilliance is a work of line and continuity much more than the Eighth Symphony.

We also hear what is the third recording of the Violin Concerto – this time from Jaako Kuusisto – a stalwart of Bis’s now completely achieved Sibelius Edition. There’s one on Campion coupled with the Sibelius and the irresistible but reactionary Janis Ivanovs' concerto; don’t miss it. The recording here is much more refined and also has greater grip at every dynamic level. This early work predates the wonderful Sinfonia which was his First Symphony. It is an intense song, very romantic in a modernist sense, somehow Sibelian without replicating the language. It is not 12 tone but feels modern and the zither and harpsichord encapsulate this at the start of the second movement. Its flood of incident and imagination certainly fascinates.

Chorali dates from 1970 and was conducted by Berglund on that first Bis LP. It sounds just as vivid here. The Seventh Symphony The Dreams of Gandalf predictably owes its inspiration to Tolkien. It recycles material from an abortive The Hobbit ballet Sallinen once had in hand. The composer says that the music is an expression of literary atmosphere and poetry: heroic and legendary, mysterious and meditative – I have appropriated Hubert Culot’s apposite words here. This fantastic music ends in calm. The King Lear piece draws on material from the opera and is completely in keeping with its sombre, tragic and minatory subject.

I would also refer you to Hubert’s review of Sallinen’s The Barabbas Dialogues. It is on a separate CPO which is not included in the present set.

Recording and production values throughout are excellent: open, vital and lively. Rasilainen and his orchestras and soloists appear confident and virtuosic and their fidelity to the composer’s vision is suggested if not guaranteed by the supervising presence of the composer during these recordings.

The annotation is in the stylish and well-informed hands of Martin Anderson. It runs counter to CPO's tendency towards a congealed dissertation style - an effect usually exacerbated by translation into English.

These eight symphonies form one of the building blocks of Finish and world culture. Far from being merely significant they also deliver a fine, virile and far from effete imaginative contribution to the two centuries in which this music was created.

-- Rob Barnett, MusicWeb International

Aulis Sallinen (1935) is one of the internationally most well-known Finnish opera composers. At home with large scale works, his Kullervo opera is considered by many his greatest achievement in the field of opera. This re-issue, recorded in 1991 prior to its 1992 world-premiere performance, includes a truly stellar cast of Finnish opera singers with Jorma Hynninen singing the title role of Kullervo. Other singers in prominent roles include Eeva-Liisa Saarinen, Matti Salminen and Jorma Silvasti.

...the conservative musical language rather brings Verdi to mind, and in a very real sense this cycle is a twentieth century equivalent to the latter’s Requiem: both are symphonic in construction and operatic in idiom, composed from spiritual rather than religious standpoints...

Listening to these two works by Aulis Sallinen is a bit like looking at two different photographs of the composer: the face is undeniably the same but not the perspective. Songs of Life and Death (1993-4) arose, rather by mischance, from a failed effort to compose a Requiem on verses by Lassi Nummi. Although title and outward form suggest Mahlerian associations, the conservative musical language rather brings Verdi to mind, and in a very real sense this cycle is a twentieth century equivalent to the latter’s Requiem: both are symphonic in construction and operatic in idiom, composed from spiritual rather than religious standpoints, and make use of secular elements. There are differences of course, not the least in scale and conception, which serve to underline a similarity of purpose and stature relative to their epochs. And while Sallinen's songs are very much songs of life, death is not here perceived as a grim or tragic end, and this imparts to the whole a peculiarly late twentieth-century aspect. Here at last is the choral-and-orchestral masterpiece Sibelius should have written, Finnish to the core yet international in appeal. It is, I believe, one of the very finest compositions Sallinen has yet produced...Very strongly recommended.

- Gramophone, 12/1995

Sallinen, A.: String Quartets No. 1-5