At the end of a career spent between his native Korea and Germany, during which he produced works that span the musical traditions of both countries, Isang Yun expressed a wish to limit himself ‘to what is substantial, in order to transmit more peace, more goodness, more purity and warmth into this world’.
After a vast and emotionally intense first movement that shows an astonishing fluidity of form, theme, texture and tonality, ‘the most glorious thing Mahler has written’ according to Alban Berg, the second movement brings joy and playfulness and seems to evoke both an urban Straussian world and folk music cultures. To the bitter irony and anger of the third movement the last movement, a mystical Adagio, seems to respond with ineffable tenderness. Often regarded as the composer’s monumental – both in terms of scale and emotional scope – leave-taking of the world, the Ninth Symphony can also be understood as a requiem for his daughter who died a few years before, an acknowledgment of the transience of life, a memorial to Vienna, an evocation of fading Austrian and Bohemian landscapes, a homage to a vanishing European cultural world.
Listeners who are sick of Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto, its bombastic opening, its pretentious ending, and all its pointless filigree in between, should hear this recording of that concerto plus the composer's other works for piano and orchestra by English pianist Stephen Hough, because they will be totally, completely, and utterly blown away. It's not just because Hough nails the notes technically or plumbs the depths interpretively, although he does both with a mastery and a dedication that rival Richter.
Given Sibelius’s reputation as one of the great symphonists of the last century, contemporary Finnish composers may be forgiven for feeling a little overshadowed. Fortunately for the young Aho, Rautavaara’s advice and support proved decisive in shaping this symphony, which began life as a string quartet.
The work is in four movements, the mysterious opening and ascending brass figures of the Andante strongly reminiscent of Shostakovich. Indeed, this is confirmed by the noted music publisher Fennica Gehrman, in a short article on the Finnish Musical Information Centre website.
Kalevi Aho (b. 1949) has stated that his works have an "abstract plot" driving his music from behind the scenes. His series of (so far) eleven symphonies certainly testifies to this statement; each of his symphonies seems to set out from a fixed point, always to confront the impassable, and always trying to reconcile that conflict in the most poignant and personal of ways.
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.
In her liner-notes Anne Weller points out that the Eighth and Ninth symphonies – paired at the latter’s premiere – are musical opposites, one dark the other light. A quick run-through of the Ninth rather confirms this, with Christian Lindberg’s mellifluous entry in the first movement quite without angst or aggression. Even the animated orchestration suggests an altogether more optimistic mood. In fact just listen to the passage that begins at 2:44, a lightly sprung piece of baroquerie with some beautifully articulated playing from the soloist.
Aho’s opera Insect Life may have been rejected at first but that didn’t stop him dabbling in the genre. Rejoicing of the Deep Waters is based on his opera, Before We All Have Drowned, which has since been performed in Helsinki and Lūbeck. And even though it was written for the city of Lahti’s 90th anniversary it’s certainly not celebratory in tone. In fact the work begins with a lovelorn surgical nurse throwing herself off a bridge, the ensuing story told in a series of flashbacks.