Einojuhani Rautavaara (; 9 October 1928 – 27 July 2016) was a Finnish composer of classical music. Among the most notable Finnish composers since Jean Sibelius (1865–1957),

thumb|left|upright|Rautavaara in the 1950s

Rautavaara attended the University of Helsinki to study piano and musicology, and eventually studied composition at the Sibelius Academy under Aarre Merikanto from 1948 to 1952. He first came to international attention when he won the Thor Johnson Contest for his composition A Requiem in Our Time in 1954, despite having, according to Rautavaara, "...absolutely no experience of writing for brass band and [a] composition technique [that] was immature at the time..." The work caught the attention of then-famous Finnish composer Jean Sibelius, prompting him to recommend Rautavaara for a scholarship to study at the Juilliard School in New York City. There he was taught by Vincent Persichetti, and he also took lessons from Roger Sessions and Aaron Copland at Tanglewood. Reflecting on his time enrolled in Juilliard, Rautavaara later said that living in Manhattan was, "Maybe the most important experience, [and] taught much more about life to me than all those teachers about music." He then returned to Helsinki and graduated from the Sibelius Academy in 1957, later choosing to study further in Switzerland that same year, under the tutelage of Swiss composer Wladimir Vogel. The following year, he traveled to Cologne, Germany to study under German composer Rudolf Petzold.

Rautavaara served as a non-tenured teacher at the Sibelius Academy from 1957 to 1959, music archivist of the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra from 1959 to 1961, rector of the in Helsinki from 1965 to 1966, tenured teacher at the Sibelius Academy from 1966 to 1976, artist professor (appointed by the Arts Council of Finland) from 1971 to 1976, and professor of composition at the Sibelius Academy from 1976 to 1990. Some of his more famous pupils during this era were Finnish composer Kalevi Aho and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen. thumb|Rautavaara with his wife, Mariaheidi, and their two children in 1961

He married Heidi Maria "Mariaheidi" Suovanen, an actress, in 1959. Together they had two sons, Markojuhani and Olof, and a daughter, Yrja. The couple separated in 1982 and divorced in 1984, after he fell in love with Sinikka Koivisto, who was 29 years his junior. In 1984 he married Sinikka.

Rautavaara was awarded the Finnish State Prize for Music in 1985.

Music

Rautavaara was a prolific composer and wrote in a variety of forms and styles. His oeuvre can be broadly divided into four periods: an early "neoclassical" period of the 1950s, exhibiting close ties to tradition; an avant-garde and constructivist stage of the 1960s, when he experimented with serial techniques, but abandoned them later in the decade; a "neo-romantic" period of the late 1960s and the 1970s; and an eclectic, "post-modern" compositional style in which he blended a wide spectrum of stylistic techniques and genres.)

His compositions include eight symphonies, 15 concertos, choral works (several for unaccompanied choir, including Vigilia (1971–1972)), sonatas for various instruments, string quartets and other chamber music, and a number of biographical operas including Vincent (1986–1987, based on the life of Vincent van Gogh), Aleksis Kivi (1995–1996) and Rasputin (2001–2003).

He has also described that he would first pick the instrumentation of a piece, where the music could then "grow organically" as a concept.

1960s

thumb|left|upright|Austrian composer [[Anton Bruckner was a great inspiration to Rautavaara in the beginning of his career]]

Along with Erik Bergman, Rautavaara was one of the pioneers of serial composing in Finland in the early 1950s, although in the end he completed only a few serial works. but was a source of material for the string orchestra pieces Canto I (1960) and Canto II (1961), and for the Third String Quartet (1965). His later operas include The Gift of the Magi (1994), Aleksis Kivi (1997) and Rasputin (2003).

1980s and 1990s

In the late 1970s, Rautavaara gradually turned toward stylistic synthesis, evident in the Organ Concerto "Annunciations" (1977) and the Violin Concerto (1977), and especially in Angels and Visitations (1978) for orchestra. It is the first in the "Angel" series, which also includes the Fifth Symphony, whose working title was "Monologue with Angels", the double-bass concerto Angel of Dusk from 1980, and the Seventh Symphony "Angel of Light".

Apart from the Angel of Light, his notable instrumental works from the period include the Sixth Symphony "Vincentiana" (1992), based on Vincent; the Third Piano Concerto "Gift of Dreams" (1998), commissioned by Vladimir Ashkenazy; the orchestral work Autumn Gardens (1998), commissioned by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra; and the Eighth Symphony "The Journey", commissioned by the Philadelphia Orchestra. In 2005 he finished a work for violin and piano called Lost Landscapes, commissioned by the violinist Midori Goto. His orchestral work A Tapestry of Life was premiered by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra in April 2008, directed by Pietari Inkinen. Rautavaara wrote a percussion concerto called Incantations for Colin Currie in 2008 and a second cello concerto Towards the Horizon for Truls Mørk in 2009.

2010s

In 2010 Rautavaara's "Christmas Carol" was commissioned and performed by the men and boys choir of King's College, Cambridge (UK) for their annual Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols. It was premiered with the Helsinki Philharmonic with his widow and son in attendance in December 2018. Rautavaara did not live to see the first opera stage première of Kaivos, the uncensored version, which took place 21 October 2016 in Budapest, Hungary.

Manuscripts of two serenades for violin and orchestra (Deux Sérénades) were presented by his widow to conductor Mikko Franck after his funeral. The serenades are titled Sérénade pour mon amour (Serenade to My Love) and Sérénade pour la vie (Serenade to Life). The first of the two was completed, while only the solo violin part for the second was completed, with sketches for the orchestra. Kalevi Aho, Rautavaara's student, completed its orchestration. The two serenades were written for violinist Hilary Hahn and were premiered in February 2019 by the violinist and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France under Franck's direction. In the studio album titled "Paris" released in March 2021, the serenades were recorded with the same artists, along with Ernest Chausson's Poème for Violin and Orchestra and Sergey Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No.1.

Bibliography

thumb|The grave of Rautavaara at [[Hietaniemi Cemetery, Helsinki]]

  • Also Munich: Piper

Discography

The majority of Rautavaara's works have been recorded by Ondine. These include a cycle of his complete symphonies and several operas and two Grammy-nominated albums. Some of his major works have also been recorded by Naxos. An album of vocal works called "Rautavaara Songs" was recorded by the Swedish label BIS Records.

In 2019 a recording of Lost Landscapes, performed by Joanna Kamenarska on the violin and Moisès Fernández Via on the piano, was released by the Mexican label Urtext Digital Classics. Pekka Kuusisto and also recorded the piece for Ondine in 2011.

References

Further reading

  • Home page at Fennica Gehrman (publisher)
  • Home page at Boosey & Hawkes
  • Home page at Ondine Records
  • Interview with Einojuhani Rautavaara, 6 June 1996
  • Einojuhani Rautavaara at naxos.com