By Vaughn Ormseth
March 12, 1999
For the last week, the Twin Cities has enjoyed a rare musical opportunity: to
hear a full range of the work of one of the world's leading composers, with the
artist himself in the audience. Einojuhani Rautavaara
is one of Finland's best-loved composers, and he has come to
Minnesota with a new work, which premieres this weekend. "Finland's Spirit:
Rautavaara" is sponsored by the Plymouth Music series, in collaboration with the
University of Minnesota and St. Olaf College.
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Einojuhani Rautavaara |
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FINLAND, THE REMOTE FORESTED COUNTRY novelist John Updike once dubbed "the
Minnesota of Europe" is a musical powerhouse. Though home to just 5 million
people, it produces an increasing number of the world's composers,
conductors, singers, and other musical artists. The composer, Einojuhani
Rautavaara, is a giant among them. The festival, being held this week in his honor,
draws from the full range of his output including an opera, Vespers, a symphonic-tone poem, chamber music, and several choral works.
Rautavaara:
I'm very happy that my music is played here and sung here and
performed; even the opera. I feel sort of at home here, being here again in a
place that seems to be very receptive to music.
Since Rautavaara is best-known for his instrumental compositions, Plymouth
Music Series Director Phillip Brunelle designed the festival to include a sampling of
those works, but with an strong accent on vocal music.
Brunelle:
I think audiences respond to Rautavaara's music because of his great
love for text. He has this incredible way of getting inside a text, of setting
a text, of giving it a real personal stamp. You really feel with Rautavaara that
particular verses have a wonderful affect. And you sense that each piece that
he has composed for chorus, and also his works for orchestra that each of them
has a real special moment. And I think that's what draws audiences to the kind
of wonder and joy they find in his music.
A number of poets - Shakespeare, Garcia Lorca, and R.D. Laing among them - are
represented this week, though one writer in particular animates the festival:
the
Finnish poet-hero Aleksis Kivi, whom Finns credit for saving their language and,
by extension, much of the country's renowned cultural life. The festival opened
with the English premiere of Rautavaara's most recent opera titled "Aleksis Kivi, "
and concludes this weekend with the world premiere of three Kivi settings
commissioned by the Plymouth Music Series.
Rautavaara:
I think every Finn knows Kivi. He's a national writer and he was
active in the middle of the last century when the Finnish language was fighting for
its existence. And there was in fact no Finnish literature before him, very few
things written, but nothing remarkable at all. And then suddenly, he's like an
exotic flower coming up from nowhere, and is great. I think he still is the
greatest Finnish writer and poet ever.
But having a great poem to work with does not necessarily make the composers
work easy. The last aria in Aleksis Kivi is a direct setting of one of the
poets best known works "Song of My Heart. " Setting the poem to music was a
daunting prospect for Rautavaara. The great Finnish composer, Jean Sibelius, had
already set the poem in an arrangement for men's chorus that is by now part of
the Finnish national consciousness.
Rautavaara:
I was afraid of taking something so sacred for every Finn as this
in the Sibelius setting is. But I'm very happy that I did. And now when I worked
on it to be performed here, I made many changes, and its a different thing
again.
Plymouth's Brunelle says that as his singers rehearsed the three pieces in the
newly commissioned "In the Shade of the Willow, " which includes a setting of "Song
of My Heart, " the work took on a special life of its own.
Brunelle:
The outpourings of his language are very personal. They're very deep.
When we finished the first read-through, the Ensemble Singers as we finished
the last note, there was a pause, and then in their own various ways they said
to me, It is an honor to be able to sing this music.
This ability to connect with audiences accounts in part for Rautavaaras growing
fame in the United States. His Symphony No. 7, called "Angel of Light, " earned
a Grammy nomination in 1997. Anneli Halonen, cultural counselor from the U.S.
Embassy of Finland, says the Rautavara phenomenon here has been a pleasant
surprise.
Halonen:
Rautavaara is very much loved in the United States, and I'm quite
astonished because its a boom. I like these kind of invasions when it comes via
music
because music unites people and peoples hearts really, elevates their hearts
around the world. So its the best way of bringing our people together."
Though Rautavaara's work steers clear of trends, it has satisfied audiences
increasing desire for more atmosphere and introspection in music. He says his
work is devoted to those realities that music alone can express.
Rautavaara:
There is a message in a good music work always yet you
cannot express in words and concepts what that message is. It can be very, very
distinct, very clear, almost like information to you. A scientist wrote once
that "the existence of music is a continuous intellectual scandal. " With that he
meant that he understands that there is a message in music, and there are no
words for that message. Its from another
world. For a scientist that is a scandal, of course. For me, its a wonderful
thing.
The Rautavaara Festival "Finland's Spirit" continues through this weekend.