Christian Tetzlaff is an absolutely fabulous violinist, and this repertoire suits him perfectly. His tone is unfailingly sweet, penetrating, and lyrical, but never burdened with excessive vibrato. His intonation is as accurate as we have any right to expect, his phrasing of the big tunes always natural and unaffected. In the slow movements, particularly that of the Mendelssohn, he makes his expressive points with an unobtrusive mastery that's truly moving, and seemingly inevitable. The music sounds as though it is being composed on the spot, songfully and spontaneously.

The couplings are perfectly chosen and even more impressive, if possible. Schumann's two clumsily orchestrated concertante works for violin and orchestra are full of beautiful ideas, but they so often bog down in what can seem like tiresome repetition. Not here. Tetzlaff plays with evident affection, making light of the difficult and often unforgiving solo parts, while Paavo Järvi does everything that he possibly can with Schumann's accompaniments. Superb engineering, ideally balanced, puts the finishing touch on an irresistible release.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

KRAUS Viola Concertos: in E?; in C. Concerto in G for Viola and Cello • David Aaron Carpenter (va, cond); Ritta Pesola (vc); Tapiola Sinf • ONDINE ODE 1193-2 (61:51)


In this day of the Internet and information-on-demand, surely many classical-music lovers have heard of Joseph Martin Kraus, but some haven’t. As to why, I won’t hazard a guess. This evaluation is written with those who haven’t in mind, so if you are among those who have already been bitten by the Kraus bug, I ask that you indulge me for a short while.


Kraus (1756–92), almost an exact contemporary of Mozart, was German by birth, but in 1778 he sought employment at the Swedish court in Stockholm. In 1780 he was commissioned to compose a “test” opera, Prosperin. It turned out to be a success and Kraus was appointed assistant Kapellmästare . In 1782 a grand tour of Europe at the expense of the Swedish monarchy afforded Kraus the opportunity to study the latest musical and theatrical trends. He visited Germany, Austria, Italy, England, and France, where he encountered the leading musical figures of the day, including Gluck and Haydn. There is an overwhelming body of circumstantial evidence that while in Vienna he met Mozart, but no documentation of such a meeting exists. After returning to Stockholm in 1787, he was named first Kapellmästare and director of curriculum at the Royal Academy of Music, and over the next several years Kraus managed to build a firm and enviable reputation as a pedagog, composer, and conductor. But Kraus’s almost meteoric career came to an abrupt end when in 1792, six months after the assassination of Gustav III, he died at the age of 36.


For many years Kraus’s musical reputation rested upon a single work, a Symphony in C Minor, which is in actuality his reworking of an earlier symphony. This was how I first encountered Kraus’s music, and I began to wonder why there wasn’t more of it at hand. I had to wait for several decades before any significant effort was made to bring his music to the ears of the concertgoing public at large. But the wait was worth it, as I found my ears opened to a long-neglected master.


Kraus is primarily known today for his symphonies and theatrical works. Although Kraus was both versatile and prolific, there were certain forms that were treated in an almost routine manner and at the top of this list was the concerto. His only violin concerto—composed around 1777 while he was still a student in Göttingen—is one of a handful of works that include a lost double concerto for violin and viola as well as a Sinfonia Concertante for flute, violin, viola, and cello. One of the symphonies also contains an obbligato part for violin and extensive writing for solo flute and cello.


The three viola concertos on this recording aren’t newly discovered works. Rather they have been, as annotator Bertil van Boer puts it, “hiding in plain sight for almost 250 years.” At one time they were offered for sale by Breitkopf as works of a priest by the name of Romanus Hofstetter, a Benedictine monk who has also been listed as the composer of Haydn’s op. 3 string quartets. The Hofstetter attribution never came under scrutiny as there was no evidence to link the concertos to Kraus. The evidence that led to Kraus being named as the composer is as follows: (1) none of the known works of Hofstetter contain any significant obbligato writing for the viola; (2) Kraus was a gifted violinist, but seemed to prefer the viola; (3) the viola was the only string instrument found among Kraus’s personal effects after his death, and Kraus chamber music—the string quartets in particular—contains extremely virtuosic writing for the viola. There are other points, including varied repetitions and modulatory patterns and handwriting that corresponds to Kraus’s style in the late 1770s and early 1780s. With all of this evidence, circumstantial as it may be, Kraus specialist van Boer had no trouble in confidently attributing these concertos to the young man from Mittenberg am Main.


Now that we have dispensed with the provenance of these works, let’s focus on the music. These are remarkably assured works for a composer in his early 20s. They exhibit above-average familiarity with the form itself as well as a complete understanding of orchestral technique and the technical capabilities of the viola. The orchestral forces are small (oboes or flutes and strings) but they are deployed and employed with confidence. The thematic material is worked through with a masterly hand and not as much as a single note is superfluous.


David Aaron Carpenter has other recordings to his credit, including Harold in Italy by Berlioz (Ondine ODE 1188-2) and a disc of concertos of Elgar and Schnittke (Ondine ODE 1153-2). I suspect that the Elgar is an adaptation of his large-scale violin concerto. Carpenter has no problem with these works, as he has technique to burn as well as a rich, round tone that recalls Lionel Tertis, the great English violist of the early years of the 20th century, for whom so many works were composed. Carpenter works his way through these concertos with enviable ease, applying a sensible combination of scholarship and musicianship and doing so in a way that earns him much respect from not only his colleagues but also his audiences.


The Tapiola Sinfonietta has been around since 1987 and is the municipal orchestra for Espoo, Finland. Here the ensemble has a string distribution of 7-6-4-3-2 as well as pairs of flutes, oboes, horns, and a single bassoon. The orchestra is well drilled, its sound quite rich, and overall the ensemble is exceptionally clean without sounding antiseptic.


This fine release is both a welcome addition to the 18th-century repertoire in general and the Kraus discography in particular.


FANFARE: Michael Carter

Kaija Saariaho (b. 1952) is among the most prominent names in contemporary music scene today. This new album by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Hannu Lintu includes world première recordings of three works by Saariaho featuring bass-baritone Gerald Finley and harpist Xavier de Maistre as soloists. True Fire is a six-movement song cycle that was written to a commission from the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the NDR Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestre National de France, for baritone Gerald Finley with an original idea to explore the scope of the baritone voice. The texts conclusively determined what the vocal expression would be like and how the details in the musical material would shape up. The disparate texts chosen by Saariaho in fact have a common underlying theme: the status of humankind surrounded by nature, our observations of it and our belonging to it. Saariaho’s orchestral triptych Orion (2002) is one of her most performed works. Orion as a celestial phenomenon is showcased in the middle movement, Winter Sky. In 2013, Saariaho rescored this movement for a smaller orchestra, and to distinguish it from the original she gave it a title in French with the same meaning, Ciel d’hiver. It joins the series of works by Saariaho that are in one way or another inspired by things in sky and space. Trans for harp and orchestra is the composer’s latest addition to a series of concertos. It was written to a joint commission from the Suntory Foundation for Arts, the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Tonhalle Orchestra in Zurich, Radio France and the Hessen Radio Orchestra. The premiere was given by Xavier de Maistre in Tokyo in August 2016.

February 2012

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It's a good thing people buy the disc before they read the notes. What sane person buys a CD, even one of contemporary music, in order to digest an essay called "Universality, Time and Phenomenology in the Oeuvre of Erkki-Sven Tüür"? Really, life is too short for such garbage, and if Tüür himself believes in this stuff then perhaps most normal listeners should look elsewhere. Happily, we can ignore the pompous twaddle and focus on the music itself, which is quite attractive.

To be sure, the vocal works try very, very hard to be "deep". Awakening mixes liturgical texts with words by various Estonian poets, but happily (for non-Estonian-speaking listeners anyway) we can ignore the words and just concentrate on the emotional ambience of the music itself. Like much contemporary music today, dissonant textures alternate with more consonant harmonies. The general pacing is slow, and Tüür makes an obvious effort to be "transcendental"--but there's little sense of strain and the work's 36 minutes pass without trying the listener's patience. It's quite beautiful.

Tüür's sensitivity to texture is everywhere in evidence in the a cappella setting The Wanderer's Evening Song. Modern choral writing often requires a virtuoso response, and this work is no exception, but the effort proves to be worth it. The text, drawn from poems by Ernst Enno (d. 1934), is yet another super profound concatenation of transcendental imagery, and I have no patience for it. But then, I feel the same way about Wagner's librettos--you may feel differently, and the setting is stunning. Insula deserta, for string orchestra, is a simple work in alternating sections rich in textural contrast. The performances are all splendid, and so is the sound. I do think that Tüür needs to lighten up a bit, but there's no question that he's a composer of real quality, phenomenology be damned.

– David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

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Starting out in the world of progressive rock music and becoming a professional composer in the mid-1980s, Erkki-Sven Tüür’s music has been becoming ever more widely recognised, and ever more refined and luminous. This recording stands as a triumphant representative of this progression.

The most recent piece, Awakening, for mixed choir and chamber orchestra, was written as part of Tallinn’s multitudinous activity as European Capital of Culture 2011. The texts are a mixture of Estonian poetry and Latin liturgical words related to Easter. This is a highly approachable score, full of colourful harmonies and transparent textures, as well as having mysterious depths to go along with the more overtly joyful gestures. Some moments are comparable to the kinds of open musical expression of Americans such as John Adams and Steve Reich, and with the strong Estonian choral tradition pushing the piece onwards like wind in the sails of a galleon. This makes for compulsive listening from beginning to end. Tüür himself views awakening as a life-long process. “While composing this piece I lingered deep on the level of instincts and senses... From a musical perspective, this composition can also be viewed as an awakening to the light.” You can’t have an awakening to light without first experiencing the dark, and there are some central minutes of nocturnal chills before we make the final journey. There is no really well defined moment of awakening as such, as Tüür’s impressionistic writing keeps us guessing if we’re looking for a point of climax. The final coda in the last few minutes has some of the most sublime choral writing you could ever wish to hear. By avoiding corny stereotypes and going back in onto the resources of his own past work, Tüür has created a work which is tremendous in its effect.

The Wanderer’s Evening Song for mixed choir was written for the 20 ^th anniversary of the Estonian Philharmonic Choir and its founder, Toñu Kaljuste. This is a narrative of the wanderer who, to quote Gerhard Lock’s booklet notes, “is bewitched by the sombre silence of the northern woods [and is] longing for home.” This piece is also concerned with a fascination with light and an approach towards blissful ecstasy, using a mixed combination of the romantic poetry of Ernst Enno to create a remarkable journey. Close harmonies, dramatic dissonance and beautifully ethereal atmosphere make this another very special work.

Going backwards in time the final work is the oldest: Insula deserta, which is the string orchestra piece which marked Tüür’s international breakthrough. This has appeared on CD before, including as part of the Virgin Classics ‘Searching for Roots’ series, in this case with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Paavo Järvi (Virgin Classics 7243 5 61993-2, 2002). There is little to choose between this version and Daniel Reuss’s as both are excellent, though the Sinfonietta Riga has a closer, more detailed and intimate feel. Exploring “the relationship between fragility and power” is a driving force in the piece, which unites and fragments the orchestra in a variety of ways, punching dramatically or giving voice to the different sections and individual voices within fields of sound.

This release represents a genuine cross-section of Erkki-Sven Tüür’s work, but is by no means a catch-all compilation. If you are new to his expressive and compelling work then I would hope it might be a springboard for discovering more of his pieces, such as the Architectonics series, and an extensive catalogue to be found on the ECM label.

-- Dominy Clements, MusicWeb International

It was an inspired idea to open this disc with Josef Suk’s wonderful Fantasy, a sort of free-form violin concerto: such a striking initial tutti, fiercely dramatic, setting the mood for a searing 23-minute stretch, with some pastoral interludes to ease the intensity. Once into the fray Tetzlaff draws on an exceptionally wide range of colors and nuances, from fragility to full-on passion. You sense that every bar has been carefully thought through and yet there’s never as much as a suggestion of calculation.

In the case of the Dvo?ák Violin Concerto and Romance Tetzlaff largely avoids portamento, though that’s not to suggest that his playing lacks either warmth or authentic flavoring. Quite the contrary; there’s a winning suppleness about the playing. The slow movement has tenderness to spare, the finale delicacy as well as panache.

With Suk’s seductive earlier recording of the lovely Romance for violin and orchestra ringing in our ears even after many decades, any newcomer has to deliver with expressive generosity, which Tetzlaff does, his approach individual but utterly persuasive. Excellent, full-bodied sound. A disc to prize.

– Gramophone

This new album by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and its chief conductor Hannu Lintu is dedicated to works by American composer Peter Lieberson (1946–2011). This album features award-winning bass-baritone Gerald Finley as soloist in Lieberson’s song cycle Songs of Love and Sorrow and Lieberson’s close friend Anssi Karttunen as soloist in The Six Realms for cello and orchestra. Lieberson’s Songs of Love and Sorrow is a deeply personal work. Lieberson had received a commission in 2005 to write a work for his wife, mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson. This project was interrupted by Lorraine’s death and soon after also the composer was diagnosed with cancer. The news of being awarded the Grawemeyer Award for his earlier song cycle Neruda Songs (2005) encouraged the composer to write another cycle on Neruda’s poetry, Songs of Love and Sorrow. The work was premiered by Gerald Finley in 2010. The composer wrote in his program notes: “I suppose that my life story of the past three years is not dissimilar to many others. The basic truths of love and sorrow are, I think, experiences that all of us understand very well. To have one without the other is not likely, but certainly it is our capacity to love that makes this human life so poignant.” Buddhist religion had played a significant role in Lieberson’s life since the early 1970s. This also had an impact on Lieberson’s compositions. According to Lieberson, “When I started writing music again, my style had changed... There was less sense of struggle... the horizon expanded. It’s as if you had tunnel vision, and then you have panoramic vision. Studying Buddhism also affected my approach to composing [in that] I understand there’s a kind of journey that’s made.”

DILBËR - COLORATURA ARIAS KLA

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

This new Ondine recording contains Olivier Messiaen’s (1908-1992) magnum opus from the 1940s, the large-scale Turangalîla-Symphonie conducted by Hannu Lintu. The recording features the renowned pianist Angela Hewitt as well as Valérie Hartmann-Claverie, who plays the rare electro-acoustic ondes Martenot. This release follows Lintu’s and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra’s recording of Ligeti’s Violin Concerto and once again showcases Lintu’s skill with 20th century composers.

Following in the tradition of Liszt's Beethoven transcriptions, these arrangements are faithful to the original yet exploit the potential of the piano in many ways.

This CD release features the popular Symphonies Nos. 2 and 5 by Jean Sibelius, performed by Finnish pianist Henri Sigfridsson on piano. Ever since its triumphant premiere, the Second Symphony has been one of Sibelius's most frequently performed works; of his symphonies, only the Fifth comes close in popularity. The works' grandiose Romanticism is brought into sharp highlight in these transcriptions for piano solo. Henri Sigfridsson has used the Sibelius-sanctioned arrangement of the Fifth Symphony by Karl Ekman as a basis for his own adaptation of the Second Symphony. Following in the tradition of Liszt's Beethoven transcriptions, these arrangements are faithful to the original yet exploit the potential of the piano in many ways. Henri Sigfridsson has emerged as one of the major musical talents from Finland since he won the Beethoven International Piano Competition in Bonn in 2005. This is his first solo album for Ondine.

SAARIAHO Clarinet Concerto, “D’Om le vrai sens.” Laterna Magica. Leino Songs • Sakari Oramo, cond; Finnish RSO; Kari Kriikku, (cl); Anu Komsi (s) • ONDINE 1173-2 (67:31 Text and Translation)


Over the years my admiration for Kaija Saariaho (b. 1952) has only grown. From early in her career she’s had an identifiable voice, one that comes from the intersection of a certain Nordic directness with a very French taste for refinement of timbre and texture (she’s Finnish, but worked at IRCAM and has lived for decades in Paris). The result is music that pleases on multiple levels: It’s highly lyrical, explores new sonorities with experimental rigor, and is never afraid of sensuality.


The three works on this program (basically hot off the press) all partake of the above-described aesthetic. The Clarinet Concerto (2010) is a suite of six movements inspired by the famous medieval “Unicorn” tapestries at the Cluny Museum in Paris, which in turn represent the senses (the final movement evokes a culminatory “sixth sense”). It’s truly haunting, in that the clarinet often uses noise and multiphonics (though always scrupulously) to suggest a sort of ghost-like keening and shrieking. Saariaho is very much in the spectralist school, which develops its harmonic practice from precise analysis of sounds in their microscopic realm, and from their correspondence to the overtone series. As a result, even her most dissonant sound masses have a spaciousness that always sounds natural and open, and that’s the case throughout this piece.


Laterna Magica (2008) is a tone poem evoking the life and work of film director Ingmar Bergman, though it never falls into any film-music cliché. It has an interesting dialectic between rich clouds of sound and more rhythmically pulsating textures (film threading through a projector’s sprockets?), and a passage where the orchestral players whisper various words (in German) relating to light is particularly striking. It falls a little more into what feel to me certain standard gestures and sonorities of this style and era, but it remains consistently appealing and mysterious. And the 2007 Leino Songs are four settings from one of Finland’s greatest poets, Eino Leino (1878–1926). This is technically the most conservative work, in that the voice is used for a traditionally beautiful melody; the instruments provide an aura about it that sometimes is more distorted, but never at the expense of the vocal line’s beauty. All this is not a surprise, since the composer has established one of the few successful track records for innovative and beautiful opera.


All these are exceptional performances, but by now would we expect less from anything coming out of Finland, perhaps the world’s most advanced musical culture (at least for what we call “classical”)? If you’ve not heard Saariaho before, this is an excellent introduction.


FANFARE: Robert Carl


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Susanna Välimäki’s booklet notes sum up the music of Kaija Saariaho remarkably succinctly: “Saariaho may be regarded as a philosophical composer of mysteries … her music seems to suggest an invisible yet tangible ‘other world’ that can be sensed in the translucent sonorities, echoes, overtones, harmonics, shadow tones and reflections of her music ... [It] conjures up a sense of infinite space and multimodality.” The colours of the orchestration in a work like the Clarinet Concerto are almost as elusive as the tonalities and harmonic language used, but at the same time the ear is granted access into a world which is infinitely fascinating - subsumed at times with an icy northern chill, but also irrigated by the magnetic shifting patterns of an aurora borealis.

As the subtitle suggests, the Clarinet Concerto “D’OM LE VRAI SENS” refers to the human senses, each inspired by the panels of a medieval tapestry called The Lady and the Unicorn. These physical aspects are suggested with instrumental symbolism and meditations rather than literal descriptive elements easily divined by an audience, but the atmosphere of mystic other-worldliness brings us into a state of wonder which can perhaps be interpreted as comparable with that of the medieval lay person confronted by inexplicable worlds beyond experience, expressed by an almost equally inexplicable miracle of craftsmanship in the tapestries. Kari Kriikku’s remarkable clarinet playing is a real treat in this work, sometimes imitating animal sounds, at times sounding like declamatory speech, and always filled with drama and intensity which equals that conjured by the entire orchestra.

Laterna Magica is titled after the memoirs of film director Ingmar Bergman, and refers to the earliest of image projectors, the magic lantern. This transfers into music in a series of ‘mirages in sound‘, creating spaces into which the imagination can project its own images. This again is more than a merely literal conjuring and teasing of our pictorial senses, and the mystic symbolism of passing time and the universal questions of existence are powerful elements in the score. Machine-like noises and quasi-spoken whisperings express the intangibility of images which seem real, and challenge perceptions of permanency and reality.

The Leino Songs use poems by Eino Leino, considered one of the most important of all Finnish poets. Reading the texts in the booklet, and it is immediately apparent as to why these texts would appeal to Saariaho, as their themes and content can easily be interpreted as expressing the very essence of her compositions. Beautifully sung by Anu Komsi, each song is compact, the words used directly and without distortion of the original poem. Each song creates its own world, reflecting the themes of love and violence, fragrant serenity and death.

This is a superbly produced recording from the Ondine label, which has been championing Saariaho’s music for some time now. Justly celebrated as one of the leading composers of our time, this varied and deeply fascinating programme is as good a place as any to become acquainted with her remarkable universe of expressive sonority and mystical depth. This isn’t Bach or Beethoven of course, but neither is it work which will turn you off with impenetrable intellectual challenges. The deeper you look the more you can reveal, but what you find is more often one or other revelation about yourself as much as an understanding of music which is of its very nature a kind of tuning fork held up to the harmonies and dissonances of existence.

-- Dominy Clements, MusicWeb International

Ondine releases the long-awaited second instalment of Kaija Saariaho’s (b. 1958) chamber works with the award-winning Meta4 string quartet. The recording also includes three chamber music songs together with soprano Pia Freund. Kaija Saariaho (b. 1958) is one of the most important Finnish contemporary composers. She is equally known for her operas, the oratorio La Passion de Simone, orchestral works and concertos and also for rich small-scale works. Saariaho’s instrumental style is particularly richly manifested in her works for strings, where she makes use of a variety of playing techniques.

Helsinki–born Parisian Kaija Saariaho’s music sounds like little else, its kaleidoscopic magic evoking Debussy refracted into the twenty-first century. This album includes the ghostly Terra memoria for string orchestra, expanded from a chamber original for the Emerson String Quartet. The beautifully scored vocal suite from Emilie, a 2011 one-woman opera about pioneering eighteenth-century scientist Emilie du Châtelet, will appeal to those beguiled by Saariaho’s dazzling first opera, L’Amour de loin (the works share a librettist, too, French-Lebanese poet Amin Maalouf). One can’t imagine the high-flying vocal role’s originator, Finnish diva Karita Mattila, being much better than French soprano Karen Vourc’h is here, nor in the shimmering song cycle Quatre Instants, also written for Mattila.

– Bradley Bambarger, Listen Magazine

Toivo Kuula (1883-1918), a Finnish composer with significant melodic gifts and a private pupil of Sibelius, is best-known as a tragic national-romantic composer of vocal music. Although Kuula's focus was in vocal music he took considerable interest in writing orchestral music and in his orchestral works he is often a conjurer of powerful Nordic moods. Kuula had also aims of becoming a symphonist but his untimely death left the project unfinished.

This disc features a large portion of Kuula's orchestral works which were completed by the time of his premature death. They were mostly written during the 1910s when Kuula travelled extensively in Germany, France and Italy - and also came in contact with the works of Debussy. In his works he used elements from the folk music of his home region in Northern Finland but was also influenced by the new trends present in European art music.

The two South Ostrobothnian Suites belong to Kuula's most popular orchestral works. They combine melodies collected by the composer from his home region (South Ostrobothnia) with Impressionistic nuances. After the premiere of the first Suite Kuula was hailed by some in the Finnish press as a successor for Sibelius. Now for the first time these two classic works in Finnish orchestral repertoire are released together on one disc. The disc also includes Festive March (written in Paris in 1910) and Prelude & Fugue (written in Italy and completed in 1909).

This awaited release is the first disc in a series of Olli Mustonen and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Hannu Lintu performing the Piano Concertos by Sergei Prokofiev. Without a doubt some of the most substantial twentieth century masterworks, Prokofiev’s piano concertos prove the composer’s brilliant piano skills. The composer premiered his First Piano Concerto in 1914. The Third Piano Concerto is the most popular of Prokofiev’s concertos. The piece took several years to complete, and premiered in Chicago in 1921. Prokofiev’s Fourth Piano Concerto (for the left hand) is the most rarely heard of the three concertos featured on this recording. He wrote the piece in 1931 for pianist Paul Wittgenstein, but the work wasn’t performed until 1956. Olli Mustonen is sought after by orchestras all over the world, and he has performed and recorded with such groups as the Berlin Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic, and The Royal Concertgebouw. His recent collaborations with the Finnish Radio Symphony have garnered excellent reviews.

REVIEW:

How many times have I regretted a shortage of fantasy, flair, and fairy-tale imagination in recordings of the Prokofiev piano concertos? Well, here is a disc that takes all those qualities to the top, gleefully goes over it, and ends up halfway down the other side. The super-light, transparent textures Hannu Lintu conjures from the orchestra are an excellent foil for the soloist. If there is room in your collection for several sets of the Prokofiev concertos, this one at least comes with a provocative distinctiveness.

– Gramophone

Rautavaara’s late works continue to reveal the hand of a master with a completely assured technique and a serenely confident personal style. Towards the Horizon, his Cello Concerto No. 2, is an introspective, poetic work cast in large-scale variation form. Like so many modern concertos, its quiet ending may limit its chances of becoming popular in concert, but the quality of the music is never in doubt and the melodic material is truly memorable. Rautavaara’s Percussion Concerto, subtitled “Incantations,” opens with an arresting chorale that returns both at the end of the first movement (sound sample below), and in the work’s final pages. I have often said that percussion concertos, conceptually speaking, are almost impossible to write because of the inherent limitations of the solo instrument(s), especially if (as here) the composer’s style is essentially tonal and melodic. To his credit, Rautavaara apportions the majority of the solo writing to vibraphone and marimba, with contrasting episodes given to untuned percussion. The result, effectively varied timbrally, works very well; even the concluding cadenza fits logically into its place in the finale, and does not outstay its welcome. Time will tell if “the percussion concerto problem,” if you accept that there is one, has been solved definitively. Either way, this is a very enjoyable listen.

Modificata belongs to Rautavaara’s early, twelve-tone period (the late 1950s) and while it’s understandable that he takes pride in some of these early pieces, there is no point in pretending that they are as characterful or successful as his later works. Even here, though, Rautavaara fashions distinctive melodic material for each of the piece’s three movements–the quick finale is particularly exciting and successful. The first movement seems to owe a little something to the first of Berg’s Three Pieces for Orchestra, but especially in this context, it would be difficult to make the case for this music being as expressive and interesting as the two concertos. Still, it’s good to have this audible measure of the distance that Rautavaara has travelled over the course of his career. As with all the releases in Ondine’s ongoing series dedicated to this composer, the performances are excellent. Both concertos are performed by their dedicatees, while the Helsinki Philharmonic under John Storgards does its usual fine job. So, for that matter, do Ondine’s engineers. Very recommendable.

-- ClassicsToday.com