Music historians of our time invariably describe the early 18th century as the era of Johann Sebastian Bach. But if one were to have asked German musicians living at the time, they might well have described it as the era of Georg Philipp Telemann. The distinguished music encyclopedia published by Johann Gottfried Walther - J.S. Bach's cousin, as it happens - in 1732 devotes four times more space to the fashionable maestro of Hamburg than to the humble Thomaskantor.

Graupner's total surviving output comprises some 2,000 separate works, including ten operas, a hundred symphonies, a thousand cantatas, 85 orchestral suites and 44 concertos. A significant part of his orchestral output consists of concertos and suites with diverse, sometimes very curious instruments in the solo ensembles.

Among the rarer solo instruments he favoured were the flûte d'amour, a flute pitched a third lower than the normal transverse flute, and the viola d'amore, an instrument roughly the same size and shape as a viola but with resonating free strings in addition to the (usually) seven strings played with the bow. Combining the traverso and hunting horn in the same concerto, or the viola d'amore and the chalumeau, was extremely exceptional for the period.

What is significant in Graupner's music is his exceptional command of melody and harmony, which do not really resemble those of any of his contemporaries.

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)

The Finnish Baroque Orchestra’s second release of Christoph Graupner’s (1683–1760) music continues to reveal delightful masterpieces by this famed-in-his-day Baroque master. + Possessing a unique personal style of writing music and often favoring certain rarer instruments in his works, Graupner’s immense catalogue contains over 2,000 works varying from orchestral works to cantatas, concertos and chamber music. + The FBO plays music from the 17th c. to the early Romantic era. It also seeks novel perspectives on early instruments by performing new music on Baroque instruments.

A 2020 GRAMMY nominee for best orchestral performance!

This new release, the second volume in the Witold Lutoslawski symphony cycle by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and its chief conductor Hannu Lintu, brings together two symphonies which belong to the most remarkable symphonic creations of the late 20th century. In his 2nd and 3rd symphonies Lutoslawski is laying out the principal foundations of his creative legacy. Conductor Hannu Lintuwas recently nominated for a GRAMMY for his recording of new works by Kaija Saariaho (ODE 1309-2) together with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra. He also won the Gramophone Award and ICMA Award for his recording of the Bartók Violin Concertos together with Christian Tetzlaff and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra.The same recording was also nominated for the 2019 BBC Music Magazine Awards. Recordings by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra under Hannu Lintu on Ondine have gathered numerous excellent reviews in the international press. Two of their recordings were nominated for Gramophone Awards in 2018. One of them, including orchestral works and songs by Jean Sibelius also won an ICMA Award in January 2018. The first volume of their Lutoslawski symphony cycle was chosen ‘Recording of the Month’ by the BBC Music Magazine in February 2019.

REVIEWS:

Lutoslawski's four symphonies are major works in the repertory, and they have been recorded a number of times. Symphony No. 2 dates from 1967. It has two connected movements: Hésitant and Direct. Symphony No. 3 was composed in 1983 and has five movements. Both of these are fascinating, rich, and imaginative with unusual orchestral textures, often convincingly dissonant and abrasive, with busts of energetic outbursts — as well as many sensitive, quiet episodes. Both symphonies are played with the greatest virtuosity by the Finnish orchestra. The recordings were made November 2018 in Helsinki’s Music Center. The multi-channel recording is outstanding, capturing all of the unusual sonorities in a spacious sonic setting.

– Classical CD Review

Lintu’s performances are superb. In the Symphony No. 3, there is a good deal of fast and intricate writing for the woodwind and strings and this is realized with confidence and a verve which goes beyond previous performances I have heard. The brass can menace and roar as required and the tuned percussion adds vivid colour.

– MusicWeb International

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

There's no question that Olli Mustonen is a brilliant pianist; the only question is whether or not his innate quirkiness, sometimes amounting to perversity, will get the better of him. It did in the first two releases in this cycle, but happily it doesn't here. Make no mistake, his impish sense of humor and delight in hyper-clear, staccato phrasing is still very much in evidence, but now it's placed in service to Beethoven's genius. This is most evident in the Fourth Concerto, which receives a performance that many will find revelatory. Right from the opening, played with a forthright brusqueness very different from the "metaphysical" inwardness we usually hear, you feel that Mustonen will be very much his own man.

Because this is Beethoven's most Mozartian piano concerto, most players stress the music's elegance and lyricism. Not here. Mustonen's crisply articulated runs and angular phrasing (check out his initial entrance) turn the piano into an individual personality in vivid contrast to the suave cantabile of the orchestra. In the slow movement, where the roles are essentially reversed (calm piano vs. angry orchestra), Mustonen achieves the necessary Olympian calm without mannerism, and this makes his single feverish outburst all the more impressive. The finale, taken not too quickly, is still Vivace in all matters rhythmic, which is exactly right, and through it all the Tapiola Sinfonietta accompanies beautifully.

The "Emperor" displays many of the same qualities: listen to Mustonen's articulation of the opening cascades; to his delicacy in the "toy music" of the second subject; to his characterful touch in the Adagio; and to a finale that once again takes Beethoven's "ma non troppo" modification to the basic Allegro tempo seriously (without compromising the music's joyous character). The only reservation in this case stems from the fact that the Tapiola Sinfonietta sounds too small in the string department to give the first movement's principal theme the weight that it ideally requires, but with excellently balanced engineering and some particularly attractive work from the horns and winds, this is a disc that deserves serious consideration. And as I said, the Fourth Concerto really is special.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Estonian composer Galina Grigorjeva (b. 1962) is known best for her timeless and deeply spiritual sacred vocal works.; The Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, masterfully conducted by Paul Hillier, performs this program of Grigorjeva’s choral works beautifully.; Nature Morte promises to be a breath of fresh air for lovers of choral music.

With The Snow Queen, the Finnish National Ballet scored a hit. This success was due not only to Andersen's wonderful story and its brilliant staging but also to the music of composer Tuomas Kantelinen. He says he wanted "to write music that is melodic, beautiful and accessible, as its principal function is to put viewers of all ages into a cheerful Christmas mood. It is a deliberate nod towards the tradition of Christmas ballets for the whole family, such as Nutcracker. I had a great deal of fun creating character dance pastiches that illustrate the conceptions that people have of the musical styles of various countries."

This is the first of two releases of Chamber Works for Strings by Kaija Saariaho, and also a tribute to the composer Kaija Saariaho who turned 60 on 14th of October 2012. Saariaho is renowned across the world for her vivid orchestration. Her chamber works highlight her ability to create unique sound worlds with only a few instruments. Here she also adds live electronics to create a unique colour.

Zemlinsky’s Die Seejungfrau has been recorded at least seven times, but this newcomer has some special qualities. It is without question the most gorgeously played and opulently engineered, which is saying a lot. After all, Chailly and the Concertgebouw (Decca) aren’t exactly slouches, and neither for that matter is Zemlinsky authority Antony Beaumont with the Czech Philharmonic (Chandos). It was Beaumont, in fact, who produced this new critical edition, restoring some five minutes of music to the central movement, including perhaps the work’s most convincing climax and interesting harmonies. So for that reason alone this performance, conducted by Storgards with 100% conviction and confidence, is worth having.

The work itself remains problematic. Thematically it owes quite a bit to Tchaikovsky–Francesca da Rimini in its “motto” theme, and the slow movement of the Fifth Symphony elsewhere. Its three movements can very easily come off as relatively undifferentiated sonic blobs due to Zemlinsky’s habit of immediately resorting to lyrical noodling just as things start to get moving. Each part seems to end five or six times before it actually stops, with the loud closing bars of Part Two sounding especially gratuitous. But the music is so beautiful from moment to moment, and so brilliantly scored, that in a performance like this one the defects hardly matter. If you’re a fan of Seejungfrau, this is now the version to own, and if you aren’t a fan, this one might make you one.

As to the coupling, well, here’s a story. At least two other very good recordings of Seejungfrau come in tandem with the Sinfonietta–Dausgaard’s and Conlon’s. This version, though, is the premiere recording of a recent rescoring for chamber orchestra by one Roland Freisitzer. I am not going to accuse Freisitzer of parasitically attaching himself to the coattails of the great (like Anthony Paine, for example, with his abominable Elgar Third Symphony), because no one is making a living creating alternate versions of works by Zemlinsky. On the other hand, the justification offered for disfiguring a late masterpiece by claiming to make it more playable by chamber orchestras just won’t wash, for several reasons.

First of all, there’s plenty of great music already written for chamber orchestra. No one needs Zemlinsky’s Sinfonietta any more than we need the recent silly, pint-sized arrangement of Mahler’s Second Symphony and other such curiosities–especially on recordings. Second, Zemlinsky’s Sinfonietta is scored for a fairly modest ensemble as it is–basically only double winds and standard brass, with no tuba. Freisitzer eliminates the three percussion parts, but adds a piano, pointlessly. His choices beg the question of just what constitutes a “chamber orchestra.” After all, if the Tapiola Sinfonietta under Mario Venzago can play Bruckner’s Fifth Symphony, then Zemlinsky’s Sinfonietta certainly stands squarely within the realm of possibility. Finally, it seems singularly strange, not to say conceptually confused, to couple a carefully prepared critical edition of Seejungfrau with a mongrel deconstruction of the Sinfonietta. Do Zemlinsky’s own ideas matter or not? The scoring of the Sinfonietta, even more than with Seejungrau, constitutes one of the most telling and original aspects of the work. This was a bad idea, despite the fact that the arrangement is excellently played by Storgards and members of the Helsinki Phil.

So because the recording of Seejungrau is so terrific, and perfectly fine recordings of the Sinfonietta are not that hard to find (including Beaumont’s, differently coupled), I am going to base the rating for this release mostly on the former, and largely ignore the latter. Seejungfrau really is that good.

-- ClassicsToday.com

Ondine continues its exciting releases focusing on 20th century masterpieces together with conductor Hannu Lintu and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra. This album is dedicated to orchestral works by the pioneer of Italian modernism, Luciano Berio (1925-2003).

A highlight of this disc is Berio's iconic 5-movement Sinfonia, undoubtedly his most well-known work, written for the New York Philharmonic and dedicated to Leonard Bernstein. It has become one of the key works and principal musical manifestations of the 1960s bringing together collage technique and modernism.

The recording begins with Berio's orchestral adaptation of Luigi Boccherini's popular Ritirata Notturna di Madrid. This disc also includes Calmo for mezzo-soprano and 22 instruments written by Berio after the death of a fellow composer and a friend Bruno Maderna. The work is sung here by mezzo-soprano Virpi Räisänen, a singer acclaimed for her performances of 20th century music.

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

SAARIAHO La Passion de Simone • Esa-Pekka Salonen, cond; Dawn Upshaw (sop); Tapiola CCh; Finnish RSO • ONDINE 1217 (SACD: 66:32 Text and Translation) Live: Helsinki 10/19–20/2012


La passion de Simone is a one-person oratorio by Kaija Saariaho based on the writings of philosopher Simone Weil (1909-1943). Unlike many assimilated Jews from Europe, Weil was lucky enough to be able to escape Nazi-occupied France and left for New York. Later she moved to London, where she worked from across the channel with the French Resistance, but died of tuberculosis in 1943, largely by refusing food or treatment. Although Weil was a German Jew, the text of this work is in French. The text, though including quotes from Weil, is as much a commentary on her life and work written for the composer by Armin Maalout.


I was deeply impressed with both the seriousness and textural beauty of Saariaho’s music. She creates an almost prismatic web of sound that underlines the solo and choral writing like a low-lying mushroom cloud; even when the music gets busy, as in the “Second Station,” the wind and brass figures seem subjugated to the overall ambience of the orchestral sound. Indeed, the chorus often seems to be a part of the orchestra, not something external or independent of it.


No one would ever claim that the solo vocal writing is tonal or melodic in the strict sense of the words, but as a friend of mine likes to say, the music does “begin.” There is a definite directionality to its progression. He and other listeners attuned only to tonality, however, may not appreciate the dark shards of brass playing tone clusters that interrupt the musical flow here and there, but I found it intensely interesting. Moreover, Saariaho has the gift of being able to match the music to the mood of the text, even though I personally felt that the words of the “Third Station” do not entirely evoke nightmarish brass explosions. The text here is:


Another person would have


Turned away from the world


To care for his own suffering.


You turned away from yourself


To fix your gaze upon the world.


Over the years, soprano Dawn Upshaw’s voice—never entirely steady to begin with—has become even more fluttery in tonal emission and a bit thin in sound, but her musicality and phrasing are beyond question. More importantly, Salonen’s conducting—so very familiar to American listeners from his years with the Los Angeles Philharmonic (where he is still Conductor Laureate)—is simply magnificent, leaving no detail unattended to in his progression from beginning to end. He even manages to find rhythmic cells within this largely amorphous music that help propel it and give it forward momentum, a task I do not envy him in. In the very busy Fifth and Sixth Stations, for instance, the music becomes exceedingly busy, with a battery of percussion driving the brass, wind, and string figures as well as chorus, which is now separate in sound from the orchestra. Salonen finds exactly the right mood and tempo for this, which then blends into the Sixth Station where the percussion moves away temporarily and the stabbing brass is confined to occasional chords, driving a sonic wedge between voices and instruments. I should also mention that every so often, certain lines are spoken (actually whispered) rather than sung. At first I thought it was Upshaw, since no one else is credited on the CD back insert, but in small print on the first page of the booklet, Dominique Blanc is credited as speaker.


By Stations 13 and 14, which discuss Weil’s illness and death, the orchestra all but falls away as the (whispering) speaker and singer dominate the proceedings. Only in the 15th and “Final Station” does the orchestra return in full force, summing up the piece musically as the text sums it up dramatically “By your death, everything that you had said/Was transformed into a testament/You walked towards your own annihilation/And you won a resurrection.”


It isn’t often that I say anything about SACD sonics (particularly in solo piano or chamber music) because I don’t have an SACD player, but in this case the sound is absolutely fantastic. Even on a conventional CD player (and this may be due as much to Salonen’s conducting as to the recorded sound), the orchestra and chorus seem to “spread out” and envelop you from the very first note, and this feeling never leaves you at any point throughout the cantata. Thus I simply must give big kudos to the recording engineers, Antti Pohjola and Enno Mäemets, the latter of whom also did the sound mixing. Not only did they capture the full ambience of Saariaho’s sound world, but they also managed not to blur the orchestral details when it was important for the inner voices to be heard. You really feel that you are sitting in the hall where this piece is being performed and recorded as you listen to it; in many places, the sound is so rich that it is almost tactile—you almost feel that you can reach out and touch it.


On the last page of the booklet, it says that La passion de Simone originally premiered as a stage work directed by Peter Sellars. I can only pray that he didn’t do to it what he did to conventional opera 30 years ago, which is to ruin it, but since it included choreography (by Luca Veggetti) my fears are compounded. Why the heck would anyone dance to this music or, even worse, to these lyrics? How do you dance through a life of misery, selflessness to others, and a personal search for spirituality in a dark and ugly world? More importantly, why would you dance this? But no matter. Although it is noted that this recording “was made in connection with this live concert performance,” the medium of a CD happily spares us these unnecessary images except for the photos on the cover and CD inlay. We are, then, happily free to imagine the music and words as separate entities, which indeed they are, and to marvel at the skill that Saariaho used in creating this marvelous work.


FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley

Ondine continues its long-term collaboration with Einojuhani Rautavaara, the Latvian Radio Choir, and Sigvards Klava by presenting the world premiere recording of Rautavaara’s Missa a cappella. Being praised by Gramophone as an outstanding body of singers, the Latvian Radio Choir is one of the top chamber choirs in Europe. This is the choir’s follow-up disc to their highly successful recording of Rachmaninov's All-Night Vigil.

Ondine proudly presents the first CD with works by German composer Jörg Widmann (born 1973) only. This release features his Violin Concerto (2007), Insel der Sirenen for Violin and 19 Strings (1997) and Antiphon for Orchestral Groups (2007-08).

Leevi Madetoja composed his magnificent Second Symphony in 1918, during the time of the Finnish Civil War. The music begins in pastoral tranquility with hints of the struggle to come. The slow second movement features cadenzas for offstage oboe and horn, growing organically in two large waves. Then violence breaks out in the war-like third movement, which also serves as a sort of development for the entire work, before a resigned epilog brings the work to a quiet close. Madetoja was a born symphonist. The very opening of the work features a motive that immediately begins to develop (sound clip), moving from breezy calm in the strings to ominous foreboding in the winds. You can tell in the first thirty seconds that the composer has total control over his material, and where he wants to go with it.

The symphony is roughly contemporaneous with Sibelius’ Fifth, and so reveals that Finnish music had more going on in the first decades of the 20th century than just its most famous composer. Consider also Kullervo, a tone poem lasting about a quarter of an hour, dates from 1913. It packs quite a punch. While not sounding quite as primal as Sibelius’ Kalevala-inspired works, it has plenty of the necessary epic feel, and it rises to a remarkably scored climax in which castanets and tambourine are used in a most unusual, threatening way to create a powerful feeling of frenzy. The Elegy (1909) is exactly what is claims to be: a gently sad, brief movement for string orchestra. It makes a touching encore.

Given their (undeserved) obscurity, both the tone poem and the symphony have enjoyed a small handful of recordings, but none that top this outstanding release. John Storgards is an excellent conductor, and he has the Helsinki Philharmonic maintaining the high standards set by his predecessor, Leif Segerstam. The performances are just about perfect in all respects: totally idiomatic, committed, passionate, and immaculately played. There isn’t a dull second, and he’s exceptionally well recorded. On evidence here the orchestra’s new home, the Helsinki Music Center, is a good place to record, certainly better than the old Finlandia Hall. A great release.

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

This new album by flutist Stathis Karapanos represents Paul Hindemith’s (1895–1963) complete works for flute, featuring an impressive roster of accompanying artists. This selection, which also includes one world premiere recording, showcases the unexpected versatility of Hindemith, one of the major names in 20th-century music, as a composer.