Rautavaara's "Angels"

Synopsis

Do you believe in Angels?

Apparently the mystical Finnish composer Einojuhanni Rautavaara did. He produced a number of orchestral pieces with evocative titles like "Angels and Visitations" or "Angel of Light." One of these, a concerto for double-bass and orchestra, is titled "Angel of Dusk," and was given its premiere performance in on today's date in 1981, in Helsinki.

"Looking out the window of a plane," wrote Rautavaara, "I saw a strikingly shaped cloud, gray but pierced with color, rising above the Atlantic horizon. Suddenly, the words 'Angel of Dusk' came to mind." Rautavaara had been asked to write a double-bass concerto for a friend, who died before the composer could comply with the request. Some years later, when the idea of such a concerto was suggested by another soloist, Rautavaara recalled the vision of the cloud, and had his title.

In an interview, Rautavaara spoke of a scientist who wrote that "the existence of music is an intellectual scandal." "With that he meant," Rautavaara explained, "…that there is a message in music, and yet there are no words for that message. It's from another world. For a scientist that is a scandal. For me, it's a wonderful thing."

"In the end, I agree with Carl Jung," said Rautavaara. "The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purposes through him."

Music Played in Today's Program

Einojuhani Rautavaara (1928 - 2016) Angel of Dusk Olli Kosonen, double bass; Finnish Radio Symphony; Leif Segerstam, cond. Finlandia 009

On This Day

Births

• 1915 - American composer George Perle, in Bayonne, N.J.;

• 1918 - Canadian composer Godfrey Ridout, in Toronto;

Deaths

• 1667 - (on May 6 or 7) German composer and keyboard player Johann Jakob Froberger, age 50, in Hericourt, nearr Montbeliard , France;

Premieres

• 1897 - Leoncavallo: opera "La Boheme" in Venice;

• 1981 - Rautavaara: Double-bass Concerto ("Angel of Dusk"),in Helsinki, with bassist Olli Kosonen and the Finnish Radio Symphony, Leif Segerstam conducting;

• 1985 - Ellen Taaffe Zwilich: "Concerto for Trumpet and Five Players," by the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble;

• 1992 - Libby Larsen: Symphony No. 3 ("Lyric"), by the Albany Symphony (NY), Joel Revzen conducting;

• 1999 - Magnus Lindberg: Cello Concerto, by the Orchestre de Paris, with Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting and Anssi Karttunen the soloist;

• 1999 - Christopher Rouse: "Seeing" (Piano Concerto), at Avery Fisher Hall in New York, by the New York Philharmonic conducted by Leonard Slatkin, with Emanuel Ax the soloist;

Others

• 1872 - Theodore Thomas conducts the first concert of the Cincinnati Music Festival ("May Festival"); His program includes Beethoven's Fifth, Handel's "Dettingen Te Deum," a Mozart aria, and a chorus from Haydn's "Creation."