Rautavaara and Martinů: Piano Concertos (CD Review)

by Ryan Ross

Rautavaara: Piano Concerto No. 3 ‘Gift of Dreams’; Martinů: Piano Concerto No. 3. Olli Mustonen, piano; Lahti Symphony Orchestra; Dalia Stasevska, conductor. BIS-2532

The unexpected coupling of these two compositions is already creating some buzz for this recording. What do they and their composers at all have in common anyway? According to the liner notes by Jean-Pascal Vachon, both men “adopted an attitude free from any musical puritanism, constantly finding new sources of inspiration which they explored without taboos.” Right. But these are also both very accessible compositions in a 20th-century musical landscape where accessibility still isn’t a particularly prestigious value, even in hindsight. It was one thing for Martinů to be composing neo-Romantic music (Vachon notes his Third Concerto’s links with Brahms) as late as 1948, but what of Rautavaara cranking out works that are at once so individual and yet so unabashedly easy on the ears, decades after having forsaken a much harder-edged idiom? This wasn’t the academically prescribed course for music history, and he wasn’t alone in demonstrating so. Maybe Olli Mustonen, Dalia Stasevska, the Lahti Symphony Orchestra, and BIS weren’t all going for this effect, but that’s just what their splendid offering here reinforced for me. 

 

Completed in 1998, Einojuhani Rautavaara’s Third Concerto, subtitled “Gift of Dreams” (which is exactly what the work sounds like), arrives in the early half of his “late style,” which includes many spiritual/metaphysical themed compositions situated somewhere between postmodernism and neo-Romanticism. I love every one that I have heard, and this is no exception. This is music of quiet strength (even somewhat in the quicker finale). Dissonances and enriched sonorities coax and engage the listener, rather than repel. The label of “contemporary music for those who think they don’t like contemporary music” might sound patronizing, or even ghettoizing. But in this case (as with other late Rautavaara works such as Angel of Dusk or the Eighth Symphony [subtitled The Journey]), it’s very much not so. This Third Piano Concerto is more than respectable as a rejoinder to claims that the classical tradition wrote itself out by the late 20th century.  

 

By my count this is the third commercially available recording of the Rautavaara. None of them are losers, but I would place this BIS disc and the initial release – Ashkenazy (the work’s dedicatee) with the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra (Ondine ODE 905-2) – in the recommended category. Between those two, it depends on whether you like the slightly deeper, more booming sound of Ashkenazy and company, or you think the music sounds better with what (to me) is the lighter touch of Mustonen, Stasevska, and the Lahti forces. I think I prefer the latter, but you’d be fine either way. Whether you want the Martinů concerto or more content by Rautavaara (Autumn Gardens plus a ‘conversation’ between Ashkenazy and the composer) as couplings might subsequently be a prime consideration in which disc you choose if you must obtain only one. 

I’ve always found Bohuslav Martinů’s music to be hit-or-miss. His bounteous talent is undeniable, as is the strong, attractive artistic personality present at his best. But sometimes he seems to get lost in extended stretches of noodling. He can also be mercurial to a fault. Nonetheless, he has a way of pulling you back in with the next work (and sometimes even the next passage within a work), just when you’re considering listening to something else. If you’re like me except that you haven’t heard the Third Piano Concerto yet, it has a good chance of becoming one of your favorite Martinů compositions. Its energy, melodic interest, and inter-movement connectedness hold the attention very well. And if you’re new to Martinů, this is certainly not a bad place to start exploring his music.

 

The present recording joins a number of other Martinů Third Piano Concerto options. To my ear, the best of the older ones is the performance given by the concerto’s dedicatee, Rudolf Firkušný, joined by the Czech Philharmonic under Libor Pešek (RCA 886447630020). Firkušný’s tone is warm, and his reading is a touch more expansive than Mustonen’s. But what makes the latter an equal in my mind is his comparative crispness and liveliness, and also this BIS disc’s terrific sound quality. Ideally, both offerings would be in the Martinů enthusiast’s collection. But for those of us who are not necessarily Martinů fanatics, this BIS release is very attractive on its own. Along with the other reasons given here, the Rautavaara pairing makes it hard to resist.