4/20/20

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Einojuhani Rautavaara (1928-2016)

Today’s piece is another large scale work featuring the piano, although I anticipate that this piece will be yet another challenge to some listeners. After Charles Ives two days ago and Franz Liszt yesterday, I hope you will see why I chose this piece to be the last culmination of the sequence. Einojuhani Rautavaara is often regarded as one of the most influential and notable Finnish composers since the legendary Jean Sibelius. In fact, a contest-winning composition of his acted as substantial basis for Sibelius to recommend Rautavaara in 1954 to the Juilliard School where he would go to study with American composer Vincent Persichetti. While his earlier music was mostly based on 12-tone serialist techniques, his later music would go on to develop into a more neo-romantic style. In total, Rautavaara composed 8 symphonies, 9 operas, and various concertos. One of his more notable works is Cantus Arcticus, a concerto for birds and orchestra which was composed in 1972. The piece utilizes recorded bird calls which are accompanied by the orchestra, sometimes in mimicry and sometimes with completely unrelated material. I find that piece to be one of his most beautiful works (along with today’s piece), with very evocative (or almost impressionistic) orchestral writing which seems to play into the affinity many Scandinavian composers had with nature and landscapes. Today’s piece was composed three years earlier in 1969, and serves as a testament to the development of his neo-romanticism as well as his writing for piano. To me, Piano Concerto No. 1 seems to be, in many ways, a response to the iconic and dramatic piano concertos which were written throughout the Romantic era, with this piece pushing the range of intensity without losing the beauty of romantic concertos.

The piece is written in three movements, each quite different from the other. The first is perhaps the most unabashedly intense, opening with relentless arpeggios and scales in the left hand supporting large cluster chords in the right hand that present the main melodic idea of the movement. The intensity that this presents allows the piano little room to grow from there, that is, until the orchestra enters underneath with a massive chord which completely overwhelms the entire texture. The density of this writing almost reminds me of the orchestral works of Krzysztof Penderecki or György Ligeti, who both pushed the limits in how concentrated and intense of a sound could be produced from an ensemble. Rautavaara allows this moment to naturally decay, revealing more and more melodic ideas as the piano emerges and reestablishes itself as the character of the piece. That brings me to another element of this piece which I love - the moments in the first movement which are so unbelievably serene. Pure, sustained intensity has little merit if it is no contrast, and the exposed moments of the piano reveal how delicate the orchestra can sound, as well as just how brilliant of a melody Einojuhani Rautavaara can write. The subdued elements inevitably build into localized climaxes in which the orchestra often enters to support the piano. It is in light of all of those things that I say that this piece is so romantic - while the harmonic language is unexpected at times and dense to the point of incoherence at others, there is conflict of melodic ideas and thematic development, much like in a Romantic era work. The movement culminates as the piano builds back up to a moment that resembles the first orchestral entrance, although in this final climax the piano reaches a new level of ‘extreme’ as the pianist is required to use their entire right forearm to produce huge expansive clusters. Having reached a point that cannot be made more dramatic, the movement concludes with that moment crashing into an impending halt.

The second movement is a refreshing pause from this intensity, with the first half being a sort of extensive chorale supported only by a hushed sustained note in the strings. I find this texture incredibly captivating because as the pianist has its own cadences, drama, and melodic drive, the strings remain quiet and stagnant, even as the pianist modulates away from the pedal point. This leads to the strings eventually reaching a point where they crescendo and culminate in a glorious ascending scale. In this moment, I can’t help but ask that isn’t it wonderful how momentous and drama-driven a simple scale in octaves can sound? This moment peaks and then fades, and as the movement progresses, Rautavaara quotes a theme from the first movement just before the pianist reaches a lengthy and brutal unaccompanied cadenza. This moves immediately (attacca) into the third movement which is (again) completely unlike the other movements. The final movement shifts the piece into high gear as the tempo is increased substantially and the piano maintains a driving rhythmic pattern. Consider this movement to be the exciting culmination of the drama that precedes in the first two movements. The movement pushes forward through chaos, aspiring to reach one final climax which is realized with the entrance of the brass in final 20 seconds of the piece, capped off by a final soaring trombone line.

In my final thoughts about the piece, I’d like to emphasize how wildly demanding this piece is for the soloist. While it may be easy for anybody to play clusters with your hand or forearm (like the ones in the first movement), the technical work required to execute that alongside ripping-fast left hand arpeggios is really quite impressive. In addition, the final movement (even though it’s the shortest movement) gives no breaks to the pianist in terms of sustained hand work. Also, I’d like to point out that even with the extreme nature and difficulty of the writing, melodic and harmonic drive is not lost on the piece. Einojuhani Rautavaara’s writing may resemble the music of Penderecki or Ligeti in terms of density, but this work displays a highly refined sense of form and melody. I urge you to approach this piece with an open mind, but also much the same you would a piano concerto by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky or Sergei Rachmaninov. Rautavaara’s Piano Concerto No. 1 remains perhaps my most favorite neo-romantic concerto to date, so I do hope that you can enjoy it as well. Below I’ve linked a recording of Finnish pianist Laura Mikkola alongside the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, accompanied by the score. If you’re watching, I can safely assure you that you certainly won’t miss when Rautavaara writes in the full-forearm chords.