Rautavaara Piano Concerti

Since Paul and Robert were going to listen, I decided to add a little description to the 3 amazing piano concerti of Rautavaara. if you have spotify I recomment the recording of Gothoni, for the 1st and 2nd concerto

Concerto 1, mvt 1: http://www.youtube.c...h?v=ank-lcc-bhU (with score)

This concerto opens with left hand piano runs and right hand clusters. These ingredients will continue to play an important role the whole movement, while it is quite lyrical.

A combinations is especially noteworthy, the piano plays a soft gentile B theme, while at the end of a phrase plays really loud clusters. The effect is really cool.

The 2nd movt (

) is a sweet middle pianoconcerto movement.

The 3rd (

) is rather energetic, danceable, where he added small introjections/trills by several winds like a painter adds blobs of piant.

The 2nd concerto (

) is similar and different of the 1st the same time. Hazy fast figures introjected with harsh moments (flexatone!) remind of the 1st concerto. But the tone is more sad. This concerto features a rather lyric and painfully beatiful mourning-theme that is exposed in the first and recaps in the 3rd movement. This theme is played so often, between the percussion interojections, the effect is that of a profoundly sad ostinate. I found this one the hardest to learn to appreciate, but now I probably like this one the most.

The 3rd concerto (

) is more different. The interesting thing about the harmonies is the pure counterpoint, because of the mirroring bass. The restult is quite pretty bitonal. Then the piano plays nice chords, accompanied by the strings.

The 2nd mov is again the normal expressive piano concerto mid mvt (

)

The 3rd is like it suposed to be the energetic finale, but I can't find it on youtube.

I own CD's with all Rautavaara's piano concertos so I can say something about them.

The first concerto is Rautavaara's best, I think. It was written as a rebelian response to avant-garde music of 1960's. Hence the lush, romantic, Rachmaninov-like piano sound, added with diatonic clusters to make it more mysterious. This is apparent in the first movement. The second movement is a typical slow romanza-like music, but contains some harsh, dissonant sonic explosions - this would become typical for Rautavaara in late 1970's (check Angels and Visitations). Third movement is a beautiful dance-like finale. The only problem I hear is a shortness - Rautavaara was never comfortable in fast pace music. He never used long allegro movements - Check his symphonies for example.

Second concerto was written during Rautavaara's "post-modern" period. He used strange contrasts between diatonics, romantic glowing of sound and sudden modernist-like bursts (especially with brass). However, I miss a memorable motif to follow this concerto. I find it a bit too confusing to be a popular part of repertoire.

Third concerto was written in 1998, when Rautavaara returned to more overtly romantic style. His use of mirror harmonies have been spotted before (Check his works for strings). This concerto is sometimes similar to the first concerto (diatonic clusters reappear, for example), but what lacks is a fast movement and something more contrasting. The third movement is really supposed to be an energetic finale but it's not energetic enough, nor it contains fast pace moments, especially in the orchestra. Just singing melodies with some potential piano activity is not exciting enough, at least for me. I find a lot of similarities with Rautavaara's harp concerto. :)

I believe Rautavaara's best concertos are for violin and for cello. They are all on youtube.