Customer Reviews

Rautavaara: Violin Concerto; Angels and Visitations; Isle of Bliss

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

 

 

Rautavaara is a modern composer accessible to anyone, but without sacrificing musical interest. The three compositions on this disc are a good introduction to his work. The closest "big name" musical kin I can think of would be Sibelius, but Rautavaara's work is more mystical in conception. He is very much his own composer, and his musical personality is well represented here.

The violin concerto is more overtly dramatic than many of Rautavaara's compositions, but never vulgar, and the solo part is played with beauty and fire by Elmar Oliveira.

"Isle of Bliss" is an orchestral fantasia lasting just a little over 11 minutes. After a strong beginning it goes a bit formless in the middle (somewhat of a weak point with this composer; he tends to sag a bit structurally at times) but masterfully evokes a strong sense of atmosphere throughout. Listening to it, I felt as though I was walking the chilly, rocky coastline of a secluded island, and as it turns out a remote Baltic Sea island was the composer's inspiration for the piece (as he himself explains in the excellent booklet notes).

"Angels and Visitations" is another work in this composer's self-titled "Angel Series," but as usual it's no new-age orchestral puff piece. As he explains in the booklet, it was inspired by a terrible recurring dream he had as a child. It stirs up a strong sense of drama, effectively mixing beauty, terror and awe throughout its nearly 20-minute length.

Not quite an hour of music, excellently recorded as is usually the case with Ondine. Leif Segerstam obviously believes in this music and leads the orchestra through some of the most effective Rautavaara performances on record. I play this one often and would recommend it to anyone interested in Rautavaara or in approachable, interesting new music.

The violin concerto is a very energetic and interesting work. Very lovely and myserious at points as well. Brilliant orchestration. Angels and Visitions, also the title of the CD, is an almost impressionistic work, and is superb. All in all highly recommended-5 stars.

Although I have many reservations about "Angel of Light" (Rautavaara's Seventh Symphony), I have none whatsoever about "Angels and Visitations", the title work of this CD. It's a very well constructed 19 minute tone poem which was inspired by a nightmare that the composer experienced multiple times. It's a truly beautiful and creative piece of music. Rautavaara is a master of orchestration, of course. But what strikes me the most about "Angels and Visitations" is its absolutely flawless musical narrative -- how motives are developed and juxtaposed, and how textures grow from one another or are transformed. And it has none of the excessive (sentimental, I dare say) sweetness of the Seventh Symphony -- I don't think that would be a proper response to a nightmare! Indeed, "Angels and Visitations" is really quite gritty in some passages. Rautavaara's own liner notes refer to Rilke's famous phrase "Every angel is terrifying" -- which is also a great description of this piece, especially when one remembers another idea from Rilke's Duino Elegies: that beauty is only the beginning terror. The other pieces on this disc are not quite as gripping to me. The violin concerto is certainly very lively and an effective showpiece for the soloist, but it doesn't quite hold my interest. The most recent work on his disc, "Isle of Bliss" is rather too close to the sentimental world of the Seventh Symphony for me -- the beginning is rather commonplace (almost like dated film music), and the main body of the work is too uneventful for me. Thus, I can't rate this disc higher since only one work out of the three in this disc really holds my interest.

The violin concerto is a very energetic and interesting work. Very lovely and myserious at points as well. Brilliant orchestration. Angels and Visitions, also the title of the CD, is an almost impressionistic work, and is superb. All in all highly recommended-5 stars.

Rautavaara has sometimes been accused of writing the same work over and over again. In fact, his style has run through a wide variety of styles from the avant-garde to the post-romantic and neo-tonal, but one thing that seems to run through his output, however, is the shining, opulent but still clear orchestration (often giving the impression of moving clusters of sound), and the intense lyricism. Still, no one can deny (I think) that the disc at hand contains a rather variegated program, representing some of the best and most characteristic works of Rautavaara's various compositional styles, and despite some similarities the sound worlds of the violin concerto and the symphonic poem Isle of Bliss are worlds apart.

The violin concerto in two movements dates from 1977. The first movement is meditative, quiet and shimmering with the solo part often soaring skywards to bleakly cold heights. It is contrasted by a turbulent, uneasy second movement containing more than a nod toward Sibelius. It is a modern-sounding work, more urbane than some of the composer's work but still with a kind of dreamlike, pastoral quality to it. Elmar Oliveira is an extremely compelling soloist throughout, with a wonderful violin tone and superb backing by the Helsinki Philharmonic under Segerstam.

The orchestra does an even better job with the tone poem Isle of Bliss (1995); not only is this work written in Rautavaara's familiar, lushly, lyrical, neo-tonal style - it may very well be his most tuneful work, as well as one of his most striking. It is something of an opulent, surging stream of kaleidoscopic colors, birdsong, atmospheres and evocative tone-painting. It would make for an excellent, accessible introduction to the composer's later style. Angels and Visitations is less immediately striking (although I do see that other reviewers disagree). Stylistically it stands as a bridge between the other two works on the disc, full of lush clustery textures and dramatic effects, overlaid with a dreamy haze and borne up by a dramatic undercurrent. Still, it sounds a little wayward in its intensity, and I am less sure it really adds up to that much. Again, the performances are first-rate and the recorded sound is very good. Recommended, particularly for the Isle of Bliss although the concerto is a valuable addition to the repertoire as well.

Over the nearly six decades that he has been active, the Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara has produced an enormously inconsistent body of work. His early pieces were, though not enormously original or memorable, fairly entertaining. Over the last thirty years or so, however, he has been writing mainly the same pieces over and over again, with a little fresh music falling here and there. This 1997 Ondine disc features examples of both kinds of products of his recent career. Leif Segerstam leads the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra.

As an example of Rautavaara's tendency to write works with little musical substance, barely indistinguishable from other pieces, you can take the two-movement "Violin Concerto" (1976-77). Starting with a saccharine cantilena, the work grows to a wave of slow tuttis led by the violin. The second movement ups the tempos a bit, but it's more of the same really. Rautavaara paints with the widest brush possible, there's no room for pointillistic passages or sparring between soloist and orchestra, and the only textures here run from "intimidatingly lush" to "lushly intimidating". Think late Takemitsu in mood but "out of focus" and without any sense of adventure beyond triadic harmony, and you'll know what to expect here. The violinist Elmar Olveira gives an unobjectionable performance, but for one used to super-virtuosic 20th-century concertos, the demands of this concerto, downright classical in its simple line, don't seem too great.

The orchestral fantasia "Isle of Bliss" (1995) often mainly suffers from the same problems as the Violin Concerto and most of Rautavaara's output, but some variety at the beginning and end adds some actual musical content to what would otherwise be endless triadic string melodies. All in all, it's not as dull as much recent Rautavaara, but it feels as if it would work better as film music than something that's going to completely occupy an audience's time.

The 20-minute "Angels and Vistations" (1978) is, in my opinion, one of Rautavaara's best works. It is based on the composer's childhood visions of a supernatural presence which apparently were quite frightening, and Rautavaara uses a constant opposition between triadic harmony and common-practice dissonance to express these fears. It opens with images of doom in the bass kept in balance by tinkling percussion, but ultimately these bright tones fade out and grimness sets in. At one point the orchestral players must even shout out in pain. At the end, however, the dissonance fades to symbolize the boy Rautavaara's acceptance of his angel. It's an engaging piece, just as successful a depiction of nightmare as, say, the second movement of Carter's "Symphonia".

"Angels and Visitations" is the only piece here that I'd really recommend to the average fan of contemporary repertoire, though you can hear it for less on a Naxos disc.

I went through a phase involving repeated, intense listenings of Rautavaara's music. Having now revisited his works some years later while plumbing through my CD collection, I have to admit, they're rather banal. The violin concerto is nice and fluvial, but ends rather abruptly. The other pieces are rather dull, sweeping strings, flowing melodies, read: sorry, boring! I've had this issue on re-hearings of much of his music, at least the orchestral works, except for the bird song one. That one is really interesting. And the Naxos Piano Works CD. Anyway, fans of a mystical, Finno-Ugric version of 101 Strings might fancy this one, but not this jaded fan.