In recent years, one of Finland’s leading contemporary composers has found international fame. His Angel of Light CD has become a world-wide best-seller and, in the words of The Financial Times, “popular taste has suddenly caught up with Rautavaara’s mystical Romanticism. The time is right for his style.” Now in his seventies, he is at the height of his musical powers. This impressionistic film explores the charismatic composer’s life and music, glimpsing the richness of his creative imagination.
Tietaejien Lahja (The Gift of the Magi)
Created specially for television and recorded in studio, this short opera by one of today’s most eminent Finnish composers is based on a Christmas story by the American writer O. Henry.
Rautavaara sets The Gift of the Magi in a poor district of Helsinki in the 19 Minna (Pia Freund) and Joel (Jaako Kortekangas), two young newly-weds, are having trouble paying their rent, let alone buying Christmas presents. Yet they both long to give the other something special as an expression of their love.
So that she can buy Joel a chain for his watch, his most treasured possession, Minna sells her beautiful hair. Joel adores his wife’s shining locks and parts with his watch so that he can purchase the magnificent set of jewelled combs she covets. Though their gifts are now useless, their joy in each other’s love is precious beyond value. In the words of O. Henry: “Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are the wisest. Everywhere they are the wisest, They are the magi.”
The telling of the story is unsentimental, Hannu Heikinheimo’s staging exquisitely observed, and Rautavaara’s music powerfully compelling. The Christmas message finds a truly imaginative and unequivocal expression in The Gift of the Magi.
Segerstam conducts Rautavaara: On the Last Frontier
“Music needs personality” said the conductor Leif Segerstam, speaking of Einojuhani Rautavaara’s choral “fantasy” On the Last Frontier. “It needs something between the lines”. And the imitable, irrepressible personalities of both of these much-missed artists are plain to see and hear in this 1998 concert from Helsinki’s Finlandia Hall. Rautavaara took his inspiration from a novel by Edgar Allan Poe, but Poe’s narrative of Antarctic exploration soon takes on a spiritual, almost other-worldly quality, in music of rapturous beauty and visionary power. Segerstam’s personal empathy with the composer gives this world premiere performance an unforgettable sense of occasion.