The most interesting aspect of hearing piano music by a composer known primarily for his orchestral work is in spotting those inimitable harmonic fingerprints that help define his musical personality. Rautavaara’s piano music is full of tell-tale signs, even in an early work like the Op. 7 Preludes, where the composer indulged a sort of clandestine protest against the ‘neo-classical’ confines he experienced both in Helsinki and America. Rautavaara was studying with Copland at the time but chose to keep his Preludes to himself. And yet it is Copland’s Piano Sonata that spontaneously comes to mind during the austere opening of his ‘The Black Madonna of Blakernaya’ from Icons – more so, admittedly, on Izumi Tateno’s CD for Ondine than on this new recording by Laura Mikkola. Icons is perhaps the most striking of all Rautavaara’s solo piano works. The translucent colours in ‘The Baptism of Christ’ make a profound effect, and so does the serenity of ‘The Holy Women at the Sepulchre’.
Aspects of ‘angels’ seem prophetically prevalent – whether consciously or not – in the Etudes of 1969. Each piece tackles a different interval: thirds in the first, sevenths in the second, then tritones, fourths, seconds and fifths. The third is reminiscent of Messiaen, and the fifth of Bartok, but Rautavaara’s guiding hand is everywhere in evidence.
Spirituality is an invariable presence, especially in the two piano sonatas, though the Second ends with an unexpected bout of contrapuntal brutality. Perhaps the most instantly appealing track is the brief but touching central movement of the three-and-a-half minute Partita, Op. 34, with its gentle whiffs of Bartok.
Laura Mikkola plays all 28 movements with obvious conviction, and Naxos’s recorded sound is excellent. Most of her tempos are broader than Tateno’s, though completists might want to acquire the Ondine CD for the sake of Fiddlers (Rautavaara’s auspicious Op. 1), which takes the place of the (musically more significant) Preludes. Rautavaara’s growing band of admirers should be delighted with either, and so should those many piano buffs who are on the look-out for appealing new twentieth-century repertoire. Still, my instinctive inclination would be to go with this new CD – and that irrespective of price.'