Rautavaara - Rubaiyat, Balada, Canto V, Four Songs from Rasputin

The Guardian 60

Helsinki Philharmonic/Helsinki Music Centre Choir/Storgards/Finley
(Ondine)

It took me several attempts to make it all the way through this disc of recent-ish choral and orchestral works by Einojuhani Rautavaara. The 88-year-old Finnish composer, mystical with a capital M, has dipped into various styles from neoclassicism to serialism to glassy Nordic minimalism during his long career, but his late style has settled into a thick, gooey swirl of post-Romanticism, and I kept feeling overwhelmingly bloated. It’s hard to fault the performances though. Canto V finds the Helsinki Phil sounding alert and committed under John Storgards, the Helsinki choir gives it loudly behind spirited tenor Mika Pohjonen in the Balada, and Gerald Finley makes rousing stuff of Rubaiyat – a song cycle that sets the poetry of 11th century Persian philosopher Omar Khayyam in a sickly Victorian English translation, with a strong accompanying dose of English pastoralism in the surging strings.