Kalevi Aho - Symphony No. 9, Cello Concerto (Hoffman, Lindberg, Lahti Symphony, Vanska)

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Kalevi Aho - Symphony No. 9, Cello Concerto (Hoffman, Lindberg, Lahti Symphony, Vanska)

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Kalevi Aho (born 1949) belongs the currently reigning generation of Finnish composers who came of age in the early 1970s in a cultural atmosphere that repudiated certain hitherto dominant musical tendencies, the chief of them being that serialism alone conferred esthetic legitimacy on a composition. Aho studied with Einojuhani Rautavaara, who encouraged his student's adventurousness. His Symphony No. 1 (1969) shows an affinity for Shostakovich, but also for Bach and the twentieth century contrapuntalists like Reger and Hindemith. Aho begins and ends his First with elaborate fugues. His Symphony No. 2 (1971), in two movements, is fugal throughout. As Aho developed, he became more audacious. The Eighth Symphony (1993) lasts almost an hour in performance and requires an organ soloist in a quasi-concertante role; the Tenth (1996) essays a similarly vast scale. The Ninth (1993-94) is smaller - needing about a half-hour to play through - and makes prominent use of a solo trombone, so prominent indeed as to constitute a genuine Symphony Concertante for the instrument. Another unusual feature of the score lies in its employment of a sackbut, generally accompanied by harpsichord, to create a sense of reversion from Ivesian wildness to Telemannesque simplicity and back again. The solo part, written for Christian Lindberg who plays it here, makes extreme demands. It sounds like Ernest Bloch's Trombone Symphony on steroids! The Concerto for Cello and Orchestra (1983-84) plumbs dark depths and does so relentlessly. Aho uses two orchestras to accompany the soloist, a regular modern symphonic ensemble and a small "baroque" band with harpsichord continuo. Where the Symphony gives the impression of uncorked, if slightly vinegary, ebullience, the Concerto presents the aspect of black despair. (Fears of nuclear war or planetary death by pollution apparently moved Aho to write it.) One listens to the Concerto for an encounter with unadulterated musical seriousness and to the Symphony for an encounter with Dionysian ecstasy. Osmo Vänskä conducts the Lahti Symphony Orchestra.

Thomas F. Bertonneau @ Amazon.com