ODE10645 - E Rautavaara: The Book of Visions - Orchestre National de Belgique; Mikko Franck, conductor

ODE10645 - E Rautavaara: The Book of Visions - Orchestre National de Belgique; Mikko Franck, conductor

Label - Ondine

Cat. No. - ODE10645

Including The Book of Visions; Adagio celeste; Symphony No.1 (rev. version 2003)

In January 2004 Rautavaara finished the piano score of Book of Visions and had almost finished the orchestration of the first part when he fell dramatically ill and had to spend six months in hospital. After a long recuperation he was able to finish the work, in four parts: A Tale of Night, A Tale of Fire, A Tale of Love and A Tale of Fate. Commissioned jointly by the Orchestre National de Belgique, NHK Symphony Orchestra and Royal Scottish National Orchestra, it was premiered by Orchestre National de Belgique, conducted by Mikko Franck, in Brussels, on April 15, 2005. In Rautavaara's own words: "Without Mikko Franck, Book of Visions would not exist. Not only because he wanted to commission a new composition, but because I had learned how naturally and understandingly he conducts my works, what a brilliant interpreter of my music he is."

Adagio celeste for strings was composed in 2000 and it was inspired by a poem by Finnish poet Lassi Nummi.

Rautavaara's Symphony No.1(1956/1988/2003) was originally in four movements. The 1988 revised version has an unusual two-movement form, consisting of a long, serious opening movement and a short, fast and ironic scherzo. In 2003 Rautavaara included a third movement between the opening movement and the scherzo. The spiritual forebears of this work would seem to be Shostakovich and, to a lesser extent, Prokofiev

Although Rautavaara's music has only really come to international attention in the past decade or so, and largely through music written since the 1980s, it is interesting to hear him forming his distinctive idiom half a century ago in his First Symphony.

Admittedly this early work has undergone two revisions, in 1988 and 2003, but those skeins of dissonant string lines - almost overdone in the recent Book of Visions - are already there in a piece that otherwise reveals an obsession with Shostakovich. The Book itself, completed last year, is a characteristic mix of spacious atmosphere and intense drama bound together by an occasionally banal diatonicism.

But in the hands of Mikko Franck, and the National Orchestra of Belgium, of which he is music director, it packs an emotional punch of a rare intensity even in the work of this composer. The symphony, too, receives a biting performance, one that captures its grotesquerie as much as its pathos. In between comes a short tone poem for strings inspired by verses of Lassi Nummi, Adagio celeste, in its nocturnal and erotic imagery a kind of latterday Verklärte Nacht.

Matthew Rye, The Daily Telegraph, 25 February 2006
Price: £13.50 (Including VAT at 15%)

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