Summerthoughts RAUTAVAARA Works for Violin and Piano 1 Einojuhani Rautavaara (*1928)
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PEKKA KUUSISTO PAAVALI JUMPPANEN SummerThoughts RAUTAVAARA WORKS FOR VIOLIN AND PIANO 1 EINOJUHANI RAUTAVAARA (*1928) Lost Landscapes (2005) 20’33 1 I. Tanglewood 5’58 2 II. Ascona 6’18 3 III. Rainergasse 11, Vienna 5’22 4 IV. West 23rd Street, NY 2’55 5 Summer Thoughts (1972/2008) 4’28 6 April Lines (1970/2006) 8’55 Notturno e danza (1993) 7’18 7 I. Notturno 5’15 8 II. Danza 2’03 9 Variétude, for solo violin (1974) 6’01 10 Dithyrambos (1970) 2’22 Pelimannit (The Fiddlers), Suite for piano based on traditional Finnish polska tunes for the fiddle (1952) 20’03 11 Fiddle tune: Närböläisten braa speli 1’50 12 I. Närböläisten braa speli (Narbö Villagers in Fine Fettle) 1’30 13 Fiddle tune: Kopsin Jonas 2’38 14 II. Kopsin Jonas (Jonas of Kopsi) 1’43 15 Fiddle tune: Jacob Könni 1’40 16 III. Jacob Könni 1’30 2 17 Fiddle tune: Klockar Samuel Dikström 2’24 18 IV. Klockar Samuel Dikström (Bell-ringer Samuel Dikström) 1’06 19 Fiddle tune: Pirun polska 2’12 20 V. Pirun polska (Devil’s Polka) 1’32 21 Fiddle tune: Hypyt 0’55 22 VI. Hypyt (Village Hop) 0’55 PEKKA KUUSISTO, violin (except tracks 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, and 22) PaavaLI JUMppanEN, piano (except tracks 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, and 21) Publisher: Boosey & Hawkes (Lost Landscapes, Dithyrambos, Summer Thoughts, April Lines); Modus Music (Notturno e danza); Fennica Gehrman (Dithyrambos, Pelimannit, Variétude) Recordings: Sello Hall, Espoo, Finland, 28.–30.12.2010 A 24-bit recording in DXD (Digital eXtreme Definition) Executive Producer: Reijo Kiilunen Recording Producer: Seppo Siirala Recording Engineer: Enno Mäemets – Editroom Oy Piano Technician: Matti Kyllönen ℗ 2011 Ondine Oy, Helsinki © 2011 Ondine Oy, Helsinki Booklet Editor: Jean-Christophe Hausmann Cover Painting: Pekka Hepoluhta Artist Photos: Maarit Kytöharju / FIMIC (Rautavaara), Sonja Werner (Kuusisto), Petri Puromies (Jumppanen) Cover Design and Booklet Layout: Armand Alcazar This recording was produced with support from the Foundation for the Promotion of Finnish Music (LUSES) and the Finnish Performing Music Promotion Centre (ESEK). 3 am very flattered and surprised if someone else finds something rewarding in my “I compositions. But immoral as it is, I basically write my music for myself and no one else. I use it to build a universe of my own.” These words of Einojuhani Rautavaara (b. 1928) are highly subjective, reflecting a belief in a self-imposed path and even a private universe. But the subjective and the universal are not mutually exclusive in art – quite the opposite. In the case of Rautavaara, it is his subjective approach that has made his music so accessible to so many people. Since the 1990s, he has been one of Finland’s internationally most frequently performed composers. Rautavaara has built his musical universe from a large variety of materials, in terms of both stylistic means and genres. He has gone through a number of periods in his career, from his early Neo-Classicism through dodecaphony to a broad-based and all-embracing synthetic idiom. At the core of his output are major works such as operas, symphonies, and concertos, and even though works for violin and piano do not occupy such a central role in his work, they are nevertheless expressions of the same personality and offer an enriching perspective on the whole. One of Rautavaara’s early successes was the piano suite Pelimannit (The Fiddlers, 1952), later adapted for string orchestra. Although originally written for piano, the work was inspired by violin music, as the pieces of the suite are based on violin polska tunes notated by Samuel Rinta-Nikkola (1763–1818), an Ostrobothnian tailor and folk music enthusiast. The young Rautavaara was impressed by the quirky polska tunes and particularly their idiosyncratic titles: “...they had an atmosphere, an aura, these old polska names. They radiated music for which the original, really quite stereotypical Ostrobothnian polska melodies were ultimately just an excuse, a motif to use for rather far-fetched variations.” Pelimannit became the first work of Rautavaara’s to be performed at a proper concert, and he called it his opus 1. Many know the story behind this fresh and vivacious set of stylised folk tunes, but not many have heard the original tunes themselves. Here is a chance to correct this, 4 as Pekka Kuusisto came up with the idea of playing the original polska tune on the violin before each piece of the piano suite. Rautavaara’s actual chamber music works for the violin can be divided into two groups: competition pieces and pieces from the 2000s, all of which are in some sense retrospective. Dithyrambos (1970) is a brief but powerful virtuoso piece for violin and piano that won 1st prize in the composition competition to find an obligatory piece for the International Jean Sibelius Violin Competition in Helsinki. The title alludes to the ancient Greek dithyrambs, hymns to the god Dionysos, which required a passionate and ecstatic performance. Rautavaara’s work fits the bill: it opens with a moto perpetuo in 7/8 metre and explodes into a glowing cantilena towards the middle. After a meditation in harmonics, the music grows to a fortissimo culmination, regaining the tempo of the opening and ending on a spirited note. The piece also exists in a version for violin and orchestra. The next Sibelius Violin Competition was held five years later, in 1975, and history repeated itself as Rautavaara once again won the competition for an obligatory piece, this time with Variétude (1974) for solo violin. It is more extensive, meditative, and serious than Dithyrambos. The title coalesces two concepts: variation and etude. Being a set of variations, it transforms its material into different moods and textures in an intensive, concise framework. Rautavaara’s third competition piece for violin, Notturno e danza (1993), had a very different genesis. The competitors for whom this was intended were not the world-class virtuosos of the Sibelius Competition but young talented Finnish musicians taking part in the chamber music competition of the Juvenalia music institute in Espoo in 1995. Notturno opens with a piano intro where chains of chords float above a steadily pulsating background and trace a slow melody line. The violin enters with a nostalgically twisting, timidly expanding melody. At the end, the violin returns to the soaring melody of the intro in muted 5 tones. When Rautavaara wrote his Seventh Symphony, Angel of Light (1994), which eventually became his international breakthrough work, he based its third movement on the Notturno. Danza is completely different: a vivacious and fresh dance in 11/8 metre, buoyant right up to its incisive conclusion. Rautavaara’s violin works of the 2000s began with a prestigious commission from star violinist Midori. The result was Lost Landscapes (2005), the only extensive chamber music work for violin in Rautavaara’s output. The ‘lost’ landscapes featured are places that were important for Rautavaara during his wandering years when he studied abroad. Rautavaara has described these landscapes as being full of memories and atmospheres, both visual and auditory – “musical life themes”, as he says. The work is compellingly nostalgic but also genuinely emotional, bringing the past back to life in the present. The opening movement, Tanglewood, refers to the celebrated summer courses where Rautavaara went on a scholarship, chosen by none other than Sibelius himself, to study with Roger Sessions and Aaron Copland in 1955 and 1956. The music grows froma calm beginning to an intensive and boldly Romantic culmination and then subsides again. The second movement takes the listener to Ascona, a town on Lago Maggiore in Switzerland where Rautavaara studied twelve-tone technique with Wladimir Vogel in 1957. The music here is more incisive than in the opening movement, and more restless thanks to its shifting tempo. Rainergasse 11, Wien is the address of the Palais Schönburg, an early 18th-century Baroque palace where Rautavaara lived for a short while in spring 1955. It was at the time the family pile of an impoverished princely family whose only source of income was renting out rooms in the dilapidated building to foreign music students. For Rautavaara, this environment was redolent with the dying embers of an era and a culture that already belonged to the past, and the music in this movement is stagnant and meditative, contemplating a time beyond time. West 23rd Street, NY was where Rautavaara lived during the winter of 1955–1956, and this memory prompted him to write fiery music reflecting the restless mood of a large metropolis. 6 April Lines (2006) is also retrospective, but in a very different way. It is in fact music from two Aprils: Rautavaara began writing the work in spring 1970 but never finished it. The score was lost for some time but then rediscovered, and he completed the work in April 2006. The abruptly shifting moods and textures of the work probably refer to the instability of April, “the cruellest month”. Summer Thoughts (2008) is also a reworking of old material, from 1972. Unlike its aforementioned springtime sister, this is calmer and more coherent, but it is not all sun and smiles. Late summer turns slowly towards autumn in the darkening nights of August – perhaps the twilight of life. Kimmo Korhonen Translation: Jaakko Mäntyjärvi 7 Hailed by the Toronto Star as “the very embodiment of joyful music-making”, Finnish violinist Pekka Kuusisto is one of the most versatile and distinctive musicians working today. Always demonstrating his extraordinary individuality and imagination, he is unusually free and fluid in his approach and has been acclaimed for the spontaneity and freshness in his playing.