Search - Joonas Kokkonen, Ulf Söderblom, Lahti Symphony Orchestra :: Kokkonen: Music for String Orchestra / The Hades of the Birds, Song Cycle / Symphony No. 1

Substance, well-crafted, engrossing Finnish music

Brian M. Kulesza | Joliet, Illinois | 03/23/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This music is as accessible as that of Einojuhani Rautavaara, and I would urge you to explore it, particularly if you are very interested in Finnish and Estonian music (as I am).



Symphony No.1 remains an enigma to me, even though I have owned this disc for about fourteen years. Therefore I remain neutral on its merits.



However, I can enthusiastically recommend "Music for String Orchestra" and "Hades of the Birds."



Music lovers of all genres like to know how unfamiliar music compares with music they know well, just for an idea. Although this may lead to a type of "pigeon-holing" I will offer my opinion as follows:



Music for String Orchestra is at times lyrical and poignant and at times propulsive and biting. It certainly is "accessible" but always with lingering, purposeful dissonances sometimes in the foreground, sometimes in the background.



At times it reminds me (only tenuously) of Bartok's "Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta." If readers are familiar with the music of William Alwyn, they may sense some commonality between Kokkonen's piece and Alwyn's "Sinfonietta for Strings."



To my dedicated (but amateur) musical ears, it sounds as if the strings are much more subdivided than in the Bartok or Alwyn works, adding to the density, but not detracting from the overall semblance of order in the piece.



"The Hades of the Birds" offers a very pleasant, less tense balance to the preceding "Music for String Orchestra" and is somewhat reminiscent of the Sibelius songs for voice and orchestra, and somewhat like Grieg, but with more jarring harmonic progressions.



As I mentioned earlier, Symphony No.1 (the final piece on this disc) is rather puzzling to me, but does not detract from all the merits of this disc.



By the way, other pieces of Kokkonen, such as the "Requiem" and his opera "The Last Temptations" are equally worth exploring.



If you try any of his discs, I hope you'll enjoy them as much as I have done."