The story behind the
composition of Aho’s Symphonic Dances
is almost as fascinating as the music
itself. In 1943 it was suggested to
Uuno Klami that he write a ballet based
around themes from the Finnish national
epic poem ‘The Kalevala’. The stage
designer behind the idea, Regina Backberg,
was promised by Klami that work would
commence in earnest in late 1944 with
Klami claiming that he had already notated
a number of initial sketches and ideas.
The promised score failed to materialise
and the early sketches received no further
attention from the composer throughout
the 1940s and early 1950s. The reason
behind the apparent apathy on the part
of Klami was a lack of enthusiasm for
the project by Finnish National Opera’s
head choreographer George Gé,
who felt that the production would prove
too difficult to bring to fruition.
Consequently it was
not until 1957 that Klami turned to
the ballet once more, this time prompted
by a competition organised by the Wihuri
Foundation. The result was Whirls,
with which Klami won the ballet section
of the competition with his piano score
of the first act. Yet in spite of this
success the work’s progress continued
to cause Klami difficulty and although
a second act did appear in 1959, a series
of cancelled premieres followed as a
result of the composer’s inability to
finish the project. Subsequently he
split the existing music up into two
ballet suites and thus the work remained
an unfulfilled project, falling into
neglect after the composer’s death in
1961.
It was in the early
1990s that a suggestion was first made
to Kalevi Aho that he should compose
the third act of Whirls. Once
again however nothing came of the project
until 2000 when the original stage and
costume designs for the ballet were
uncovered amongst the possessions of
the late Regina Backberg. Aho was subsequently
commissioned and the premiere took the
form of a concert performance by Osmo
Vänskä and the Lahti Symphony
Orchestra in December 2001.
Aho named his work
Symphonic Dances. Hommage à
Uuno Klami and based the piece around
the names of five dances noted by Klami
in the rehearsal score for act one,
as being intended for act three. The
music however is Aho’s and although
he alludes to themes from act one in
the Prelude there are few, if
any direct quotes. Rather, Aho has allowed
himself to be consciously influenced
by Klami’s language and period as a
means of keeping the atmosphere of the
piece as close to the original music
as possible.
The result is an extraordinary
achievement. A magical fusion of Klami’s
own language, coloured and refracted
through Aho’s compositional mind. I
use the word coloured quite literally,
for Aho is a born colourist and orchestral
painter who also happens to write with
astonishing facility. Although in four
movements the final instalment, Dance
of the Winds and Fires is by a margin
the most substantial as well as being
the only movement in which Aho employs
electronic colour. The opening Prelude
commences with an ascending figure also
evident at the close of the entire piece,
before the material expands to frame
a central dream like sequence that gains
animation only to close once again in
quiet mystery. The Return of the
Flames and Dance grows from
its initial flickering, gradually gathering
momentum until the flames dance with
ever increasing energy to a final explosion
of sound. Grotesque Dance begins
in lugubrious fashion with timpani and
sluggish bassoons until all manner of
strange beings and animals emerge from
the forest in reference to the original
Kalevala story. Listen out for the astonishing
tuba solo, Aho’s depiction of the Devil’s
Elk! In the final panel the east, west,
south and north winds blow in turn,
the sound of the wind created electronically
whilst the music passes through a gradually
emerging waltz passage, ultimately culminating
in a huge, appropriately whirling climax
of almost apocalyptic proportions as
the winds all blow simultaneously. From
the chaos emerges a final hymn of consolation
in the middle strings, an affirmation
of belief in the future that subsides
to silence.
One of my discs of
2003 was the
BIS recording of Aho’s Symphony
No. 3, a magnificent performance
by the same Lahti forces as heard here
under Osmo Vänskä. As with
a good number of the composer’s symphonies,
both the third and eleventh introduce
an additional instrumental element,
in the former a concertante part for
violin, in the latter a percussion ensemble
conceived specifically with the six
percussionists of Swedish ensemble Kroumata
in mind. Indeed, the piece was originally
intended for premiere in Sweden although
as the composer explains in his detailed
sleeve note, circumstances ultimately
dictated that it received its first
performance in Finland. The occasion
was the inaugural concert of the Sibelius
Hall in Lahti and the composer describes
the premiere as one of the "greatest
triumphs" of his career as a symphonist.
In purely symphonic
terms I do not believe that this work
presents Aho at his best. After all,
with ten preceding examples to consider
he has much to live up to by his own
standards. That said there is much to
enjoy and as is so often the case with
Aho’s music, the attention is rarely
allowed to wander. Cast in three movements
of roughly similar proportions the first
begins in veiled shadows with instrumental
textures appearing through the mists.
Gradually the music gathers rhythmic
energy until an extraordinary central
percussion cadenza in which all six
percussionists take up castanets. The
music that emerges changes character
completely, the tempo now fast, the
material mercurial and fleet of foot
before subsiding into silence. The central
movement is effectively one huge accelerando,
progressing from the initial soulful
melody played by heckelphone to rhythmically
driven material in which various drums
propel the momentum to a final manic
percussive tremolo. In total contrast
the final Tranquillo rarely rises
above a piano dynamic, a hypnotically
haunting movement, the music taking
on what the composer describes as an
almost ritual quality. Here the percussionists
are dispersed around the concert hall,
eventually leaving the stage one by
one, each playing antique cymbals. It’s
worth listening out for the atmospheric
sound of six ten-stringed kanteles that
are employed around two thirds of the
way through the movement.
With the Lahti Symphony
Orchestra and Osmo Vänskä
on their usual fine form and aided by
a recording of admirable transparency
and atmosphere, this is a winner of
a disc. It also completes another excellent
instalment in BIS’s ongoing Complete
Aho series, a project the breadth of
which most composers can only dream
about. Of the two works however it is
the mightily impressive Symphonic
Dances that wins the day and should
not be missed.
Christopher Thomas
Kroumata Percussion Ensemble 