Kahlevi Aho

Finnish composer Kalevi Aho has produced a considerable and varied body of work that continues to grow rapidly. Aho first tackled the genre of string quartet at the very beginning of his composing career, more than fifty years ago, and has only recently returned to it. Aho was only 18 when he completed his String Quartet No. 1 in 1967. Self-taught at the time, Aho took his inspiration from the essentially tonal music he played on the violin or heard on the radio. The Second Quartet was composed in 1970, during his second year of studies at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki with Einojuhani Rautavaara and uses fugue technique in each of it's movements.

Although the Finnish composer Kalevi Aho is best known as a symphonist, his constantly expanding catalogue includes numerous concertos as well as countless chamber works and arrangements of works by other composers. This disc brings together works from these three genres. The Guitar Concerto, dedicated to Ismo Eskelinen, posed many challenges for Aho, who is not a guitarist himself. It is a seven-movement work exploring the different ways the guitar can be used – sometimes with far from traditional techniques –and exploring its sonic possibilities. The Quintet for Horn and String Quartet was commissioned by Ilkka Puputti, who had previously premièred Aho’s Solo X for horn.

Renowned for his rich production in the field of orchestral music, Kalevi Aho is also a prolific composer for chamber forces. On this disc, three works spanning two decades have been combined.

The number of Aho recordings has grown substantially since my 2009 MusicWeb survey, The Music of Kalevi Aho. Initially, that focused on BIS releases, as the label’s championed this composer’s work from the start – eClassical lists 35 albums so far – but others are showing interest, too. Which is why we’ve now set up a dedicated, easy-reference index, with links to every single Aho review published by MWI. Our feisty Finn, 70 this year, is a fast worker – I reviewed three of his latest albums just a few months ago – so all credit to BIS for recording his new pieces with commendable speed. Even then, there’s still a lot waiting in the wings.

Second Symphony is also a youthful work – the composer was just 21 at the time – but it differs from the First in that it’s cast in a single movement. After the premiere in 1973 Aho decided to rework the middle section, a task he didn’t attempt until 1995. The result is a compact, tightly structured piece – it’s a triple fugue – which the composer candidly admits was intended as an antidote to some of the more ‘difficult’ music of the 1960s.

Einojuhani Rautavaara and Kalevi Aho, teacher and pupil, are both key figures in the Finnish music of their respective generations. Rautavaara’s musical language evolved from neoclassicism through dodecaphony and the stylistic freedom of the 1960s before he eventually allowed himself to choose his expressive idiom according to the individual requirements of his works. Towards the end of his career, his works took on a very consistent, softtoned character. For his part, Aho also began his career using a freely applied neoclassical style before gradually progressing to a more varied, at times modernist expressive and incisive approach.