Although all these song sets have been recorded before, none is available in truly comparable versions. Gabriel Suovanen's warm, silky baritone is ideally suited to Rautavaara's songs, which fit his voice remarkably well given their stylistic diversity, ranging in time and idiom from 1951 tonality - albeit reworked in 2005 - through serialism to his current postmodern manner. The Shakespeare Sonnets are student works; in the booklet Rautavaara acknowledges Britten's influence, although there is Prokofiev in the orchestration. The contrast with the two Rilke cycles, Five Sonnets to Orpheus (1955) and Die Liebenden (1958-59), could scarcely be more pronounced. Suovanen's and Segerstam's view of both, Die Liebenden especially, is a touch on the slow side but undoubtedly effective. So, too, in a different way, is their treatment of the four aphoristic numbers of God's Way (1964, rev 2003, to verses by Bo Setterlind), which culminates in a powerful setting of the Blake-like “Dream in the Cathedral”. I must confess to finding the three songs from his 1997 opera Aleksis Kivi less immediately involving but they receive a strong performance and their fuller textures make a fitting culmination to the programme. Ondine's sound, as ever, is first rate.