EINOJUHANI RAUTAVAARA (b.1928): 3 Sonnets of Shakespeare, 5 Sonette an Orpheus, Die Liebenden, God's Way, 3 Songs from the Opera Aleksis Kivi.

Description: Although Rautavaara may have written a substantial number of songs, none of these were originally for orchestra. Everything here, except for the three songs from the 1997 opera, are orchestrations of much earlier piano-accompanied songs. The Shakespeare set (1951/2005) will make you think of Britten but the German Rilke settings (1955-56/1960 and 1958-59/1964) are much weightier: dodecaphony, skillfully employed so that communicability of emotion is the only result, lends these fraught texts an austere and dramatic power (which can also be said about the much shorter, Swedish-language "God's Way" from 1964/2003). German/ Swedish/Finnish-English texts. Gabriel Suovanen (baritone), Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra; Leif Segerstam.