Rautavaara: Sacred Choral Works - Beautiful music beautifully recorded

Rautavaara: Missa a Cappella
Sacred Choral Works
Latvian Radio Choir
Sigvards Klava, director
Ondine

There's a consistency about Einojuhani Rautavaara's writing that gives his music a timeless quality. After auditioning this new release, I revisited the earliest recording I owned of his music, "Angels and Visitations" (1997). The style was virtually identical.

That's not to say Rautavaara hasn't grown creatively. Rather, to me it shows that once he hit upon the best way to express himself musically, he's simply continued in that vein, creating works that continue to be deeply spiritual and thought-provoking.

This new release is no exception. The major work on the album, Missa a cappella, is a floating, ever-changing cloud of sound that benefits from the resonant echoes of the cathedral it was recorded in. This is not music for the concert hall, but truly music for the church. Rautavaara writes masterfully for choir, creating a work that is ethereal and spiritual, yet rooted in human emotion.

The release is filled out with several shorter a cappella selections that compliment the Missa perfectly. The Latvian Radio Choir under Sigvards Klava has a warm, blended sound ideally suited to Rautavaara's music. Beautiful music beautifully recorded.

Rautavaara: New Concertos from a Finnish Master

Rautavaara: Towards the Horizon; Modificata; Incantations 
Truls Mork, cello
Colin Currie, percussion
Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra; John Storgards, conductor
Ondine

This new release sheds some light onto Einojuhani Rautavaara's growth as a composer. The outer two works are  recent concertos, composed in 2008/2009. But the middle work, Modificata, was written in 1957, when Rautavaara  was just 29 years old  and very much enamored with serial composition.

The current version, though, is his 2003 revision of the work, which smoothed out some of the jagged edges. Still, it's a very stark and aggressive-sounding work, especially when compared to the concertos that flank it.

Rautavaara's second cello concerto, "Towards the Horizon" is a single-movement work full of expression. The cello seems to float along over top of an orchestral ocean of ethereal harmonies.  As the title suggests, there's a sense of motion towards a destination that's always out of reach. And while the cello part isn't that challenging technically, to meaningfully convey all the emotion written into the score requires top-notch musicianship. And Truls Mork fills that role admirably.

"Incantations" is a percussion concerto composed for Colin Currie. Currie met with Rautavaara during the composing of the work, and created his own cadenza. Having Currie perform on this recording makes the concerto come alive. All the hallmarks of Rautavaara's current style are there; the stacked chords, the warm orchestration and the large musical gestures to which the solo percussionist provides additional rhythmic impetus. Most of the the time, Currie's playing melodic percussion instruments, but even when he's not, Rautavaara's written the work so it sounds like he is.

This is fine addition to Ondine's catalog of Rautavaara recordings.