Aulis Sallinen - Piano Trio; Cello Sonata (Elina Vähälä; Arto Noras; Ralf Gothóni)

Information

Composer: Aulis Sallinen

• (01) Cello Sonata, Op. 86
• (05) From a Swan Song, Op. 67
• (06) Piano Trio, Op. 96

Elina Vähälä, violin
Arto Noras, cello
Ralf Gothóni, piano

Date: 2014
Label: cpo

https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/cpo/detail/-/art/aulis-sallinen-klaviertrio-op-96/hnum/3097629

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Review

In his Piano Trio, completed in 2010, Aulis Sallinen imagined ‘the sensuous world of a painter going blind’. It seems a perfect (if saddening) image given Sallinen’s inbuilt tendency to obsess over simple, tangible musical ideas. The first phase of the Trio appears to alight upon elements it can still ‘see’, latching on to them desperately. From that hesitance the Trio suffers a devastating loss of power and momentum, nearly sinking altogether as even those initial elements appear suddenly intangible. After a recovery of sorts comes an unspeakably beautiful ending – one of Sallinen’s uncanny musical realisations of visual disappearance.

Even in Sallinen’s grandest of symphonies we’re used to things being said only when they really need to be said; his chamber works operate on absolutely the same fundamental architectural level but the minimal scoring means, perhaps, you sense even more the beauty with which he approaches his instruments. Particularly the cello, featured in all three pieces here and played with intense patience by Arto Noras (the dedicatee, as are all the musicians here in all three works), whether bowing or plucking. The Cello Sonata (2004), in my mind a Romantic sonata that suffers a nervous breakdown, is so very Finnish: flirting with tango, employing a Sibelian concision in which everything that happens seems to have emerged from what happened immediately before it, and eventually shutting off with utilitarian simplicity.

From a Swan Song (1991) for piano and cello uses a theme from Sallinen’s satirical opera The Palace. It was fashioned as a test piece for a competition and it shows: a rare example of a Sallinen piece doing rather too much. Still, it’s beautifully and delicately played, as is everything here. Eminently listenable-to music even at its most introspective, caught in impressive sound.

-- Andrew Mellor, Gramophone

More reviews:
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2015/Apr/Sallinen_chamber_7778142.htm
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2015/May/Sallinen_chamber_7778142.htm

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Aulis Sallinen (born 9 April 1935) is a Finnish contemporary classical music composer. He attended the Sibelius Academy and studied with Aarre Merikanto and Joonas Kokkonen, among others. Though Sallinen was a known teacher and was on many boards of directors, his compositions were not particularly noted until he was made "Artist Professor" by the Finnish government in 1976, letting him concentrate on composing. He has had works commissioned by the Kronos Quartet, and has also written 7 operas, 8 symphonies, concertos for violin, cello, flute, horn, and English horn, as well as chamber works.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aulis_Sallinen

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