Madcap

Iiro Rantala plays the piano with “emotional magnetism and musical intelligence”; he has a “virtuosic prowess as an improviser capable of enormous idiomatic and emotional range.” (Downbeat) This praise from the American magazine’s review of the Finnish pianist’s third and recent studio-recorded solo album for ACT, “My Finnish Calendar” (2019) sums up the astonishing variety which people who know his playing well might almost start to take for granted. The citation for the 2016 JTI Jazz Prize in Trier also does well to define the way audiences take him to their heart: “Rantala can sweep listeners off their feet, he can be clown and magician, charmer and virtuoso, maverick and humorist.”

This DVD of Ariadne is a 1978 film based on Filippo Sanjust’s Vienna State Opera production. The bustling Prologue is set in the backstage area of the mogul’s palace and the 18th century costumes fit neatly. In the opera proper, the stage is transformed into a very stagey desert island with an improbable set of stairs leading to the heroine’s cave, the action spilling over into the theatre’s side boxes at times. While there’s nothing particularly imaginative about the production, it never distracts from the main event–the music. Strauss was profligate in his melodic gifts, his ability to make a reduced orchestra sound big, and his wonderful obsession with the female voice, which yields many glorious moments in the opera. Lavish casting helps.