Rautavaara Cantus

This CD features one of the most frequently performed Finnish orchestral works of all time, Cantus Arcticus - Concerto for Birds and Orchestra by Einojuhani Rautavaara, which is coupled with Symphonies Nos. 4 and 5. This release is the second volume in a cycle featuring the complete symphonies by Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara. The recordings were made in Leipzig in 1989/1990, with the Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra led by its then Chief Conductor Max Pommer, and originally released in July 1990.

First released in 1999, this well-played, superbly-recorded album makes a near-perfect single-disc introduction to the music of Einojuhanni Rautavaara (1928-2016), not only the most significant Finnish composer after Sibelius, but very probably among the finest of all later-twentieth century masters. Rautavaara is undoubtedly the greatest composer most people have never heard of, and that's a shame, though, one might hope, records such as this will go some way towards remedying so glaring an injustice.

This marvelous disc contains what unquestionably is the finest available performance of Cantus Arcticus, Rautavaara's most popular piece. (…) Excellent sonics, warm and well-balanced (in the concerto).

This four-disc Ondine set collects the complete concertos of Einojuhani Rautavaara. While these 12 works may not make the best argument for the Finnish post-modernist's status as a great composer – his eight symphonies surely make good that claim – they certainly make the best argument for his status as an amazingly effective, astoundingly diverse, and wonderfully individualistic composer. The works themselves are all from Rautavaara's wide-ranging maturity.

This four-disc Ondine set collects the complete concertos of Einojuhani Rautavaara. While these 12 works may not make the best argument for the Finnish post-modernist's status as a great composer – his eight symphonies surely make good that claim – they certainly make the best argument for his status as an amazingly effective, astoundingly diverse, and wonderfully individualistic composer. The works themselves are all from Rautavaara's wide-ranging maturity.

The Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra (GSO; Swedish: Göteborgs Symfoniker) is a Swedish symphony orchestra based in Gothenburg. The GSO is resident at the Gothenburg Concert Hall at Götaplatsen. The orchestra received the title of the National Orchestra of Sweden (Swedish: Sveriges Nationalorkester) in 1997.

This six-disc boxed set offers a broad survey of a hundred years of Finnish chamber music, featuring more than sixty performers and twenty composers – between the late Romanticism of Toivo Kuula’s Piano Trio (1908) and the postmodernism of Veli-Matti Puumala’s String Quartet (1994). Highlights include songs by Aare Merikanto sung by Soile Isokoski, Einojuhani Rautavaara’s Rilke song cycle, sung by Marcus Ullman, and Joonas Kokkonen’s third string quartet, performed by the Sibelius Quartet.

Florent Nagel - Livre pour Piano (2018) {Azur Classical AZC 158}
FLAC (tracks) - 16bit/44.1kHz - Official Digital Download (qobuz.com) -> 185 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 132 Mb
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© 2018 Azur Classical | AZC 158
Classical / Contemporary Classical / Piano Solo

This isn't my first encounter with the music of Florent Nagal. Last year I reviewed his Alice in Wonderland for two pianos and narrator, a highly original piece transporting the listener on an imaginary journey. Nagal was born in 1979 and studied at the Conservatory in Lille, France. Later he took tuition from Vladimir Soultanov at the Moscow Conservatory and Christine Sieffert-Marchais at the École Normale de Musique de Paris, picking up prizes along the way. He works as a composer, pianist and teacher.

Five of the discs on this six-CD set are previously released Naxos recordings of a broad variety of works by Estonian composer Arvo Pärt. The set offers a generous sampling of works spanning the composer's career, from his polystylistic Collage über BACH (1964) for orchestra to his 2001 Nunc dimittis for a cappella chorus.