Okko Kamu

Here’s a strange and interesting CD if I’ve ever heard one. It begins with Peter Eötvös’s contemporary piece Levitation, written for two clarinets, accordion, and strings. But don’t break out your polka records for a comparison; this music is more of the style normally described as “contemporary ambient,” with brief shards of musical motifs drifting, interacting, and creating a mood rather than a work with a form that one can grasp. Ironically, I find it much more palatable than some of the contemporary music I’ve reviewed recently, such as Maxwell Davies’s Symphony No. 1 or the piano music of Judith Lang Zaimont. The first section depicts a hurricane scene in which phone boxes and traffic signs float on the violent winds, yet the music is not as violent as the description suggests. Its fragmentary nature, and reliance on a small group of instruments, results in an atonal yet somehow fascinating musical environment.

Alfred Schnittke - The Ten Symphonies (2009) {6CD Set, BIS Schnittke Edition, BIS-1767~68} (Item #26)
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 1.61 Gb | MP3 @320 -> 1.01 Gb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 43 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 2009 BIS Records AB | BIS-CD-1767~68
Classical / Contemporary Classical / 20th Century

BIS is proud to present the only available collection of the complete symphonies by Alfred Schnittke. The recordings, part of the Schnittke Edition begun in 1987, have been brought together in a 6-CD boxed set which also includes an initiated essay by Schnittke’s close associate Alexander Ivashkin: a fascinating chapter in the history of the late 20th-century symphony.

The Unknown Sibelius presents a spectrum of the music that is the least wide-spread of the Finnish master’s production, either because the pieces included belong to genres not usually associated with ‘Sibelius the symphonist’, or because they appear in versions that differ from the ones that are performed frequently all over the world. A case in point is the opening Finland Awakes, a rarely heard version of what is possibly Sibelius’ best-known piece, Finlandia, in which the famous ‘hymn’ tune is restated in full, scored with unashamed flamboyance for brass, at the end of the piece. That recording and others on this disc are culled from the complete SIBELIUS EDITION brought to a close in 2011 – but completeness is a relative concept: a ‘complete’ edition is only complete until the next mislaid manuscript or forgotten work is re-discovered.

Nigel Kennedy’s repackaged 1986 recording of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto is an adventure – free, rhapsodic, emphasising the constant flow of song which is the work’s main asset. Perhaps he’s a little over-keen to emphasise what melancholy there is here, nearly bringing the outer movements to a halt with the bitter-sweet dreams of second subjects, but the Canzonetta is a miracle of introspection. All this passes Gil Shaham by. While the young Israeli clearly has a fabulous palette, conjuring a bright, beautiful sheen at the top of the instrument (though unduly spotlit by DG), he rarely uses it discriminatingly enough, and the sense of flexible movement so vital for the Tchaikovsky is missing.

The Finnish composer Kalevi Aho (b. 1949) and his younger colleague and compatriot Sebastian Fagerlund (b. 1972) have both received international recognition for their masterful treatment of large orchestral forces. This they have demonstrated in purely orchestral as well as in concertante works- Aho has written 26 concertos to date (most of them in his monumental project to compose a concerto for each of the main orchestral instruments), and Fagerlunds concertos for clarinet and for violin have been released by BIS to critical acclaim.