Customer Reviews

Rautavaara: Symphonies Nos. 4 & 5; Cantus Articus

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Einojuhani Rautavaara (b. 1928) is one of the 20th century's most notable Finnish composers. His late postromantic music, such as the popular Symphony No.7, subtitled "Angel of Light," reminds many of Finland's greatest composer, Jean Sibelius, for its romantic arc merged with modernism and aura of distant, icy Scandinavian shores. The composer has been criticized for writing a lot of music that sounds a bit too familar, especially his later symphonies.

That's not an issue of this CD, however, as some of the prolific composer's variable styles are represented. This contains his greatest composition, Cantus Arcticus, or Concerto for Birds and Orchestra from 1972, as well as his early Symphony No. 4 from 1962 and the postromantic Symphony No. 5 from 1985, 31-plus minutes of episodic music in one long movement. The two symphonies are quite different; No. 4, in four traditional movements, is a serial composition while No. 5 begins the long road the composer tread as an archtype 20th century postromantic.

It is Cantus Arcticus where an interested listener should begin their examination of Rautavaara and the performance here, by Rautavaara expert Max Pommer and the Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra, is without equal. Pommer perfectly captures the essence of this near-impressionistic music. While other recordings are basically too loud, this performance has the taped sounds supporting the evocative orchestral imagery to create the suspension of reality necessary to make the music work. The conductor's use of vivid yet refined aural descriptors, especially the subtle usage of the accompanying taped bird sounds, make the most of Rautavaara's benchmark opus.

The playing of the Leipzig orchestra is magnificent throughout this well-recorded concert. This is, with Hannu Lintu's recording for Naxos of Cantus Arcticus, the tonal, Brucknerian Symphony No. 3, and modernist Piano Concerto No. 1 Rautavaara: Cantus Articus; Piano Concerto; Symphony No. 3, the other essential Rautavaara disk anyone interest in him should purchase. I'd strongly recommend this recording to anyone that wants to get to know one of the late 20th and early 21st centuries' more accomplished symphonists.

This Ondine release features three of contemporary composer Rautavaara's most important works. The first, and most downright beautiful piece of the three, is the oft-performed "Cantus Arcticus, Concerto for Birds and Orchestra." This work mixes taped bird sounds from around Finland with very dissonant but lovely string arrangements, and in doing so, predates (it was written in 1972) much ambient and New Age music later to come which would either incorporate environmental sounds with mellow, soothing tones (the work of Robert Rich) or manipulate the natural sounds themselves, transforming nature into music (the album, "Songs of the Humpback Whale"). With "Cantus Arcticus," one is also reminded of the birdsong transcriptions of Olivier Messiaen, as the orchestra weaves in and out of the spontaneous chirping sounds, apparently in imitation of the wildlife. The only problem with this piece is an audible hiss which increases with the dynamics of the orchestra. It is difficult to tell whether this noise is present on the initial recordings of the birds or if it is merely a case of poor engineering and mastering on the part of Ondine, but unfortunately, it is somewhat distracting. My guess is that it is unavoidably a part of the source tape of the birds, because I didn't notice it in the two symphonic works. Still, this performance of "Cantus Arcticus" is a joy to the ears and one to be reckoned with.

"Symphony 4," as another reviewer has already stated, is a serial work which is very much in the style of Boulez and the European avant-garde. This is the earliest, and in my view, least interesting work on the disc, as its serial nature makes it practically unrecognizable from a host of other 20th Century orchestral works. That being said, it IS well-composed and far from a detriment to Rautavaara's catalog.

Written in 1985, "Symphony 5" is clearly the most mature work of the three. The harmonies are dense yet subtle, and the dynamics are nothing short of invigorating. The style of this symphony bridges the gap between Mahler and the French Impressionist orchestral works, such as Debussy's "La Mer." One could even go so far as to describe "Symphony 5" as a "neo-impressionist" work, and though it might seem as if this is a regression for Rautavaara, hearkening back to these late 19th and early 20th century artists, it is easy to see how "Symphony 5" is a culmination of his earlier melodic ideas extolled in Cantus Arcticus, and thus, a step forward for the composer.

Overall, "Cantus Arcticus" is the most original of these pieces, so I can understand why shows up on the majority of available discs by Rautavaara, however, the two symphonies included are also a pleasure to hear and rife with interesting ideas, and the entire disc manages to be both intriguing and enjoyable. Highly recommended.

Beautifully evocative, and the birds are magnificent. Lovely music for a harsh era.

This Ondine disc, a 1996 reissue of a 1990 original, features three rather different works from the Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara. Max Pommer leads the Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra.

The great Rautavaara fad of the late 1990s was based on his many works in a neoromantic vein, and "Cantus Arcticus" for sinfonietta (1972) was the first big success. Subtitled "concerto for birds and orchestra", it pairs the orchestra with recordings of birds made in north Finland above the Arctic Circle. The orchestral writing serves provides subdued and utterly minimal counterpoint to the birds, who in the first two movements are in the spotlight, while in the third both assert themselves toward an elegant climax. The orchestral writing includes some aleatorism, but this is not very noticeable even if one compares different recordings. This Naxos recording is especially admirable for its balance; in other recordings the birds are often too low in the mix. It's a charming piece, and it's no wonder that it has become Rautavaara's most widely performed work. Still, after hearing the piece several times, one begins to notice a lack of substance in the music, which turns out to be common to most of Rautavaara's music written afterward.

The 16-minute and four-movement Symphony No. 4 "Arabescata" (1962) is Rautavaara's only wholesale submission to Darmstadt-style modernism. While the Third was a work of twelve-tone serialism, it ended up sounding mostly like Bruckner. The Fourth, on the other hand, in some of its movements serializes rhythm, dynamics and timbre and resembles Webern or Boulez, while elsewhere it contains highly aleatoric writing and graphical notation. I really like this, actually. It's wacky and wild, but with still somehow identifiably Rautavaara. While it's hard to write more than one work like this, if Rautavaara had permanently integrated these techniques into his compositional toolkit, his music would not have undergone the great stagnation of recent decades.

By the Symphony No. 5 (1985) Rautavaara had begun to seemingly write the same work over and over again. And given moment from this symphony is indistinguishable from the Sixth, Seventh, or Eighth symphonies, "Isle of Bliss", "Garden of Spaces" and so forth. If you hear one of these creations, their triadic harmonies and spicy "dissonances" can be impressive at first, but if you know Rautavaara's oeuvre, they start to disappoint. Of the late Rautavaara, I can recommend only the recording of the Eighth on Naxos, and mostly because it is historically important as the piece which sparked the Rautavaara cult.

Even if Cantus Articus seems to be Rautavaara's most popular work, I do not consider this piece a great one, at least not for the concert performance. It works perfectly as a scene music on Discovery channel or Animal planet, but since there is no fast movement (again) in this work, I find it pretty boring. The melodies are simple and beautiful, and bring Sibelius' Swan of Tuonela in mind, and the recorded sounds of birds are intriguing, but three slow (sluggish!) movements are too much.
Fourth symphony is clearly Rautavaara's most radical composition. Even such composer as Rautavaara cannot achieve beauty with serial techniques. It shows again how the constructivist's methods of the 50-ies and 60-ies of 20th century were doomed to last long.
But the fifth symphony is gorgeus! Even if it again lacks the agility, fortunately Rautavaara had enough artistic strength to create more simple music, but with something new: the orchestral colour, the rises and drops of chords (C major triad is notable) and fragile and haunting beauty make this symphony a memorable one. It looks like Rautavaara had more luck with symphonies of odd numbers and less with even numbers. Maybe on purpose? We'll probably never know.