Rautavaara: Works for Cello & Piano

Featuring

Tanja Tetzlaff
Gunilla Süssmann
Einojuhani Rautavaara

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Performer Biography

Pianist Gunilla Süssmann was diagnosed with focal dystonia in her right hand shortly after this recording, making her future ability to play uncertain.

Composition History

Rautavaara's Cello Sonata No. 1 was begun in 1972 but only completed in 2001 after the score was discovered among the papers of cellist Erkki Rautio's son, Martti Rautio.

Compositional Technique

Rautavaara's Sonata for Solo Cello is structured in four movements following the slow-fast-slow-fast scheme of Baroque church sonatas, with a motto theme recurring throughout the work.

Composer's Artistic Vision

Rautavaara's compositional style evolved from Neo-Classicism to dodecaphony and serialism in the 1950s, then to a broader Neo-Romantic or 'post-modern' style in the 1960s, synthesizing these approaches in his later career.

Composition History

Rautavaara's Cello Sonata No. 2 originated from his work Dialogos, which received third prize in a 1975 competition but was not performed, and later incorporated themes from his opera Auringon talo.

Composition History

All three of Rautavaara's cello sonatas were inspired by Erkki Rautio, a leading Finnish cellist of his generation, who also premiered Rautavaara's Cello Concerto.

Composer Biography

Einojuhani Rautavaara, the composer, lived in the 18th-century Baroque palace of Schönburg in Vienna in 1955, which was still bearing the marks of World War II.