Einojuhani Rautavaara (1928-2016)
Symphony No. 3 (1960)
Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra / Leif Segerstam
00:00 I. Langsam, breit, ruhig
12:18 II. Langsam, doch nicht schleppend
19:33 III. Sehr schnell
26:09 IV. Bewegt
"The Third Symphony, written in 1959-60, constitutes a synthesis of the romanticism of the First Symphony and the modernism of the Second. The work is twelve-tone but does not aspire to total chromaticism: on the contrary, the note-row generates the pitches and intervals but the music itself is shaped according to what, ultimately, are tonal laws. As a result, the Third Symphony to surprising harks back far beyond the First Symphony to Bruckner and German Late Romanticism. Rautavaara's Third Symphony is unique in Finnish music in its response to Bruckner - in no other Finnish symphony have Bruckner's musical language and formal thinking become such a clearly perceptible part of the personality of another composer living at a totally different period. But this is not to diminish the work's value. The Third Symphony is a genuine product of Rautavaara's imagination; it was his most important work to date and his first real symphonic masterpiece. The Symphony has four movements and breathes in broad spans, as if in the rhythm of the land and sea. As in Bruckner's last symphonies, the orchestral forces include four Wagner tubas."
-Fennica Gehrman Oy Ab