Rautavaara: Tapestry of Life premiere in New Zealand
(June 2008)
Einojuhani Rautavaara’s most recent symphonic work, A Tapestry of Life, co-commissioned by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, was premiered in Auckland on 5 April conducted by Pietari Inkinen, in honour of the composer’s 80th birthday year. The impetus for the four-movement score came from a poem by Edith Södergran (1892-1923), whose imagery triggered memories stretching back to Rautavaara’s childhood:
“As a young boy I was presented with a book of poetry by Södergran and later I set several poems from it for chorus. Stars Swarming is a surrealistic night vision, where stars keep falling in the garden until the lawn is full of splinters. In Halcyon Days the impulse comes from a simple, monotonous repetition of a triplet. From this background a melody is born, a slowly ascending cantabile. Passionate, even violent moments are met, but they also seem to belong to those happy days.
“Sighs and Tears have their share in the tapestry of life as well. Cor anglais and oboe lament, and violins join them in a wide, plaintive song – until woodwinds with two harps build a colourful background for the growing cantilena. The Last Polonaise is like a variation on this solemn dance, which seems to have a special significance for me, as a symbol of finality. My opera The House of the Sun ended in a polonaise, and in Rasputin a polonaise opens the dramatic story of the end of the tsar.”
“Few contemporary composers are as skilled as Rautavaara in using tonality without compromise. Stars fell in the first of its four pieces, with the plink of harp and glockenspiel, but the lush strings of Stars Swarming were replaced by testier shadings in the following movements. By the final Polonaise, few would have remained untouched by the grandeur of this stirring work.”
New Zealand Herald
Rival first recordings of Rautavaara’s Manhattan Trilogy have been recently released on Ondine and Naxos. Gramophone reviewed the discs noting how “the composer deployed the full panoply of his late orchestral manner in a hugely engaging triptych describing his ‘hopeful Daydreams’, sudden nightmares of doubt’ and ‘slowly breaking Dawn of the personality’.”
Buy the Ondine recording of Manhattan Trilogy from our Online Shop.
> Further information on Work: A Tapestry of Life
Photo: Ondine Records
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