Rautavaara: Piano Concertos Nos. 2 And 3 / Isle Of Bliss

Description

Einojuhani Rautavaara (b. 1928)Isle of Bliss Piano Concerto No. 3 ('Gift of Dreams') Piano Concerto No. 2Einojuhani Rautavaara was born in Helsinki on 9th October,1928. Graduating from Helsinki University in 1952, he studied at the SibeliusAcademy with Aarre Merikanto and, after winning a Koussevitzky Foundationfellowship in 1955, with Vincent Persichetti at the Juilliard School, and withAaron Copland and Roger Sessions at Tanglewood. He furthered his studies inAscona with Vladimir Vogel and in Cologne with Rudolf Petzold. A lecturer atthe Sibelius Academy from 1966 to 1971, he was then appointed to the stateposition of Professor in Arts. Rautavaara's early pieces, typified by the prize-winning ARequiem in Our Time (1953), drew on the Nordic classicism of Sibelius andNielsen, as well as the influences of Bartok, Shostakovich and folk-music. HisFourth Symphony (1962) was among the first Finnish works to employ serialtechniques, while the subsequent widening of his stylistic range gave rise, in1972, to two of his most enduring works: Vigilia, drawing on Orthodoxliturgical chant, and Cantus Arcticus (Naxos 8.554147), employing tapedbirdsong alongside modal and aleatoric (chance-derived) elements. Greater tonalorientation is evident in his more recent music, such as the last foursymphonies (Symphony No. 7, Naxos 8.555814) and the operas Thomas (1985),Vincent (1990) and Aleksis Kivi (1997). Meanwhile the growing recognitionaccorded his music can be gauged from the number of recordings andinternational commissions received over the last decade. Composed in 1995 for the orchestra of Espoo Music Institute,Isle of Bliss was inspired by Home of the Birds, a poem of Aleksis Kivi(1834-72) depicting the mythical concept of the island paradise. Rautavaara'spiece broadly follows the overall form of the poem: a lively opening, passinginto a reflective section, marked by contributions from numerous solo windinstruments, which evokes time standing still; at length, the emergence of anexpressive string threnody denoting the arrival of dawn, then a recall of theopening pages which precedes the music's swift passing into silence. Rautavaara's First Piano Concerto, written in 1969, wasamong the first works in which he turned away from an outwardly modernistaesthetic, seeking, in his own words, to evoke \the entire rich grandeur of theinstrument. Twenty years later and the Second Piano Concerto, written at therequest of Ralf Gothoni, finds an intriguing accommodation between traditionaland more radical elements. Serial technique is employed, but the re-orderingsof a twelve-note row do not determine the substance of the composition asmediate between the diatonic and chromatic facets of the melodic and harmonicwriting. There are three movements, played without a break, with the durationof the outer two together equalling that of the inner one.  In Viaggio opens with rippling piano figuration againstfragmentary orchestral writing, a passionate melody moving upwards