NORDGREN: VIOLIN CONCERTO NO 4

NORDGREN: STRING QUARTETS NO 4

NATIONAL TREASURES - FINLAND,

REVIEW:

The Finnish soprano Aino Ackté, an enthusiastic promoter of her country's music (she founded the Savonlinna Festival to foster a national operatic repertoire), was so struck by Juhani Aho's novel Juha that she wrote a libretto based on it and offered it to Sibelius. When after long consideration he rejected it, the next composer she turned to was Aarre Merikanto (1893-1958). It was an imaginative choice: in 1920 he was a promising young composer, from an operatic background (his father Oskar Merikanto was the most successful Finnish opera composer of the period), and had already written one opera himself. That student one-acter, however, had been condemned as excessively modern, and Merikanto destroyed it. Almost a worse fate awaited Juha. The Finnish Opera demanded various changes and then, without actually rejecting the piece, shelved it. With remarkable insensitivity Ackté later offered the libretto to yet another composer, Leevi Madetoja, thus making it even less likely that Merikanto's work, with its rumoured reputation as a difficult modern piece, would ever be performed. It was not heard until a broadcast performance three months after the composer's death, and did not reach the stage until five years after that.

Since then, however, despite the continuing popularity of Madetoja's 'rival' setting, Merikanto's work has come to be seen as something of a classic in the Finnish operatic repertoire. It is late- or post-romantic in style, the richly sonorous orchestration owing something to the nineteenth-century Russians and to Scriabin, something to Debussy (at times, therefore, it sounds faintly Delian or Baxian). The very word-responsive vocal lines recall Janácek; so does Merikanto's way of ending some scenes with dramatic abruptness. But the melodic lines have a strength that is his own; it is easier to trace their influence on his pupil Aulis Sallinen than to find any obvious model for them. The plot, too, is one that Sallinen might have taken to instinctively had two other composers not already set it: an eternal triangle of a loving but elderly, crippled husband, dissatisfied young wife and glamorous but brutal stranger. Marja leaves Juha for the wealthy merchant Shemeikka (in fact much of his income is from robbery and extortion) but soon discovers that she is but the latest of his annual 'summer girls', who become unpaid servants once he has finished with them. She returns to Juha, who forgives her, forgives even the child she has had by Shemeikka, but on learning that she was not abducted by him but followed him of her own free will he despairs and kills himself.

The music is at its strongest when it touches the rawest emotions: Juha's passive suffering and his blind animal rage when he at last confronts Shemeikka and cripples him; Marja's adoration of Shemeikka and her pain at his abandonment of her; the moving sincerity of Juha's forgiveness; perhaps most of all the touching lyricism of Anja, an earlier 'summer girl' who still loves Shemeikka despite everything. The music is saved from austerity by its often rich colour (when for example Shemeikka tempts Maria with gifts of a silk scarf, a golden brooch) and the use of folk (or folk-like) music: Shemeikka, at times a jovial Hunding or a jesting Scarpia (although, most tellingly, he is a tenor), turns into a Finnish Khan Konchak when he welcomes his newest temporary consort with music and dancing.

The performance is splendid, Hynninen dark voiced and vehemently eloquent, Saarinen capable both of long-lined lyricism and a touch of edgy shrewishness, Sirkiä suggesting Shemeikka's allure in broad lyrical lines delivered with a heroic ring.

There are no weak links in the supporting cast, and Saraste obviously loves the score's opulence and its big gestures. The recording is first-rate, giving an excellent impression of how stageworthy Juha is.

-- Gramophone [8/1996]

Vocal Recital: Davis, Osceola / Hynninen, Jorma - Negro Spir

It is as a composer of songs and piano pieces that Erkki Melartin (1875–1937) is chiefly remembered. Primarily a miniaturist, he was none the less drawn to the symphony, which he considered crucial in his output, completing six in all at much the same time as Sibelius's seven. The two recorded here exhibit the essential strengths and weaknesses of Melartin's large-scale music: big, portentous outer movements with striking ideas not always at ease within symphonic form, framing delightful, lyrical intermezzos. These central movements contain the best of this composer—there is no denying the exhilarating quality of the Fifth's final quadruple fugue, nor the grandeur of No. 6's peroration.

Strauss and Mahler stand behind No. 5 (1915) at over 30 minutes long an unusually large Sinfonia brevis, which is arguably the finest of all Melartin's symphonies. The Sixth (1925) was composed under the heady influence of Expressionism. Its oppressive atmosphere and dark hues make it seem a precursor of Allan Pettersson. Leonid Grin's firm direction allows the poetry of Melartin's invention the right amount of space to bloom, while the avoidance of over-emphasis in the heavyweight No. 6 is spot on (although the scherzo should have more bounce). Erkki Salmenhaara provides the excellent and fulsome notes to both discs. Devotees of Nielsen, Stenhammar and early Sibelius will find much to attract them. Recommended.

-- Gramophone [12/1994]

Nordgren, P.H.: Symphony for Strings / Hate-Love / Transe-Ch

Choral Concert: Tapiola Choir - TORMIS, V. / ASHEIM, N.H. /

Witold Lutoslawski is one of 20th Century’s greatest composers. He is also a remarkable symphonist. The three works on the present release performed by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and conducted by Hannu Lintu, represent three important stages in Lutoslawski’s career: his 1st Symphony, one of his earliest significant works; Jeux vénitiens was the first work in his best-known stylistic phase; and his 4th Symphony remained his last extensive work. Lutoslawski began his First Symphony in difficult times, during the Nazi occupation of Poland. At the time, he was making a living playing piano duos with composer colleague Andrzej Panufnik in the cafés of Warsaw. It is firmly rooted in Neo-Classicism but has none of the irony or stylization commonly associated with that style. Also, it makes no use of folk music elements, which frequently appear in many of Lutoslawski’s post-war works. The title of Jeux vénitiens alludes to the fact that the work was meant to be premiered at the Venice Biennale. In the end, only three movements were performed there in April 1961, and the final four-movement version of the work was premiered in Warsaw in September in the same year. Secondarily, the title alludes to the game-like nature of its aleatoric writing. The Fourth Symphony is a product of Lutoslawski’s late period at its most refined, characterized by a more nuanced and translucent harmonic approach than before, greater rhythmic clarity, a more straightforward approach and an expanded role for expressive melodic writing. These features stemmed in part from the fact that the importance of aleatoric sections was decreasing. In the Fourth Symphony, aleatoric counterpoint only accounts for about one fifth of the duration of the work. Conductor Hannu Lintu is an excellent advocate of Lutoslawski’s music. Hannu Lintu recently won the Gramophone Award for his recording of the Bartók Violin Concertos together with Christian Tetzlaff and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra.

REVIEW:

"In 1915, just two years before the Russian Revolution, Sergei Rachmaninoff wrote the breathtaking All-Night Vigil, a high-water mark for Russian Orthodox choral music. But the work had a short shelf life as the Bolsheviks cracked down on religion. These days, recordings of the work abound, but this new version by the Latvian Radio Choir and conductor Sigvards Klava is among the best. There's no orchestra, just voices, yet Rachmaninoff applies terrific coloristic and orchestral effects. In one section, sopranos ring out like tolling church bells. And here, listen for the rich, symphonic layering he gets with groups of voices shining like rays of light through stained glass." – Tom Huizenga, NPR Music

Haydn's instrumental concertos represent only a relatively small part of his output, and were mostly written when the composer was still finding his mature style. The Double Concerto, composed in 1756, is not an especially profound work, although its association with Haydn's frustrated affair with Therese Keller is touchingly revealed in the intimate and expressive Adagio, where Csaba and Gothoni, sympathetically accompanied by the strings of the Kuhmo Virtuosi, create an expressive atmosphere that vividly conveys the music's special emotional significance. Canino uses a harpsichord for his performance with Accardo and the ECO, and that instrument's relatively bright tone suits the clear textures of the score particularly well. Nevertheless, subtle balance between both piano and violin, and soloists and orchestra make Csaba's and Gothoni's elegant and stylishly phrased account immensely engaging.

Mendelssohn's youthful D minor Concerto for violin, piano and strings was composed in 1823 and shows the boy composer's delight in sheer virtuosity and abounding melodic invention. In this piece, Csaba and Gothoni play with flair and sensitivity to realize the music's varied dramatic content, sample the affecting warmth and lyrical poetry in the second movement or the sparkling agility in the concerto's overtly exuberant finale. Kremer and Argerich offer even greater expressive fluency and flamboyance, but Csaba's and Gothoni's version, which effectively places the soloists at the front of the texture, will have wide appeal for its comparably arresting blend of broad lyricism and effervescent technical brilliance.

-- Gramophone [1/1995]

This CD contains piano works by Finnish composer Erkki Melartin, the author of over 350 mostly Romantic-Impressionistic piano pieces. The performer is Japanese-born pianist Izumi Tateno.

REVIEW:

Izumi Tateno's playing is technically brilliant, and the piano sound is superb.

-- Fanfare Magazine, July/August 1989

Narrated in Finnish - Lasse Pöysti, narrator

MUSIC IN HELSINKI CATHEDRAL