Alba introduce us to the piano music of two Finnish composers
born within nine years of each other.
Kokkonen's solo piano music has not had much prominence. This
collection traces its development in reverse chronology. We start
with the very imaginative and transparently dreamy, leaf-swirling
and driftingly dissonant
Bagatelles. This contrasts with
the little
Religioso. The 1953
Sonatina was written
for the composer to play rather than to any commission. It has
some of the centred placid feel of the
Bagatelles but
its rumpled explosive air is redolent of Shostakovich. The dissonance
has cleared for the
Two Little Preludes written in 1943
while Kokkonen was a young officer in the Finnish Army conflict
with the USSR. This is melodious and springy music - playful
and wistful.
Pielavesi is saturated with nature impressions
absorbed during summer holidays at his brother's home. Lyrical
and free of discord it epitomises the Scandinavian summer in
language that darts and lulls. It has a vaguely French Ravelian
accent but the Finnish voice is strong. It is a sheerly lovely
piece across movements entitled:
Preludietto,
Nocturne,
Rain,
Clouds
at Evening and
Morning Wind. The last piece with its
cut-glass and brittle spray of notes is is the most original
of the five. Young proficient pianists should seek out this music
- it will captivate. From the year before the suite comes the
1938
Impromptu which is stormily rhetorical in a way reminiscent
of a turbulent Rachmaninov
Etude-Tableau.
The Meriläinen disc takes us by the hand through the tentative
dissonance and Nancarrow-like sprints of
Papillons. This
is tough music yet atmospheric. The same might be said of all
four works. If you have trouble with dissonance and fragmentation
of the lyric line then you need to try elsewhere. Meriläinen's
Second
Sonata is musing, wayward, glum and aggressive, stern yet
concise. The
Fourth Sonata is also uncompromising, fantastical,
absorbed in the articulation and clear presentation of the bass
realms of the instrument. The title refers to an orchestral work
with this title: the
Lyrical Legend of 1963. After the
epic duration of the Fourth Sonata its successor returns after
two decades to the same duration as the second sonata but here
in a single movement. The music remains thorny and fractured
in its expression and progress. Glass smithereens fly, stutter
and swirl. Harri Suilamo in his liner-notes draws a parallel
with Meriläinen's
Kinetic Poem of 1981 - the composer's
Fourth Piano Concerto.
Fascinating music-making from an unflinching modernist who has
no time for ingratiating style changes.
Rob Barnett
Janne Mertanen (piano) 
