Olli Mustonen: Symphonies Nos. 2 & 3

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Olli Mustonen is better known as a pianist (or a conductor, here leading his own music) than as a composer, but his work in the latter area is gaining increased attention. This pairing of symphonies could serve as a good introduction to his work, and it has much to recommend it. Mustonen's style fuses neo-Romantic elements with sounds from interwar modernism, particularly Hindemith. It is such a natural combination that one wonders why nobody has thought of it before. The Hindemith-esque neo-Baroque (or neo-Renaissance) polyphony usually occurs in outer movements, but in the Symphony No. 2 ("Johannes Angelos"), it comes most prominently in the slow movement, where it symbolizes the Eastern Orthodox mysticism into which the inhabitants of Constantinople must have retreated when it became clear that the city would fall to the Turks. The entire work is a remarkably detailed programmatic instrumental piece about the last days of the Eastern Empire, complete with a blow-by-blow of the final downfall. The Symphony No. 3 ("Taivaanvalot") for tenor and orchestra is a bit less immediate in its appeal, but it has attractions, including a difficult tenor part seamlessly dispatched by Ian Bostridge (the text is in English, not Finnish). The work is based on an adventure episode from the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala, and though Mustonen is far from the first Finnish composer to draw on this epic, his musical language seems especially suited to it. Bostridge gave the premiere of this work, and with Mustonen as conductor, one may take these performances by the Turku Philharmonic, one of Finland's remarkable collection of regional orchestras, as definitive. The Ondine label delivers its usual sterling sound from the Turku Concert Hall.

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