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    Aarre Merikanto: Symphony No. 2; Ekho (2013)

    Posted By: peotuvave
    Aarre Merikanto: Symphony No. 2; Ekho (2013)

    Aarre Merikanto: Symphony No. 2; Ekho (2013)
    EAC Rip | Flac (Image + cue + log) | 1 CD | Full Scans | 256 MB
    Genre: Classical | Label: Alba | Catalog Number: 351

    This Alba release includes Symphony No. 2 & Ekho for soprano and orchestra by Aarre Merikanto, one of the greatest ever Finnish composers, finely performed by the Turku Philharmonic Orchestra and soprano Anu Komsi. Symphony No. 2 is a World Premiere Recording! Ekho is a setting of a poem by the Finnish poet V.A. Koskenniemi for soprano and large orchestra. On this new release the work is performed by the internationally praised Finnish soprano Anu Komsi with her dynamic coloratura voice.

    Composer: Aarre Merikanto
    Performer: Anu Komsi
    Conductor: Petri Sakari
    Orchestra/Ensemble: Turku Philharmonic Orchestra

    Reviews: This Alba release represents a milestone in the discography of significant Finnish music of the post-Sibelian early 20th century, completing the label’s cycle of the three symphonies by Aare Merikanto (1893–1958), one of the most crucial and transformative figures who helped to bring his national music into the Modernist era. A few years ago Alba issued a premiere recording of Merikanto’s First Symphony (ABCD 336) paired with his Third—the first modern recording since the groundbreaking 12-LP Fennica set of 60 years ago. This latter CD has apparently never been reviewed in Fanfare but now the project is complete at last.


    As the son of a famous composer of mostly vocal music (Oskar Merikanto, 1868–1924), Aare always knew he wanted to be a musical contender. After preliminary studies with Melartin, as a teenager he traveled to Leipzig to learn the fundamentals with the redoubtable Max Reger, then subsequently spent a few unexpected but fertilizing months in Russia as a pupil of Vassilenko, which was to have a determinative effect on his early idiom. It was during this period (1914–1916) that he completed a large-scale First Symphony, a self-consciously epic and sometimes exhausting effort amalgamating all these varied influences into a kind of frenetic Straussian-Sibelian broth. A few years later (1918) he embarked on an even longer three-quarter-hour Second Symphony, which often sounds like an attempt to rewrite the First but in a more cogent and coherent form. Its four movements are filled with soaring and exhilarating ideas clothed in dense orchestration which sometimes recalls a Nordic Bax. The slow movement is especially interesting because of a passage where there is use of huge trombone glissandos unlike anything heard elsewhere before or since. The work is subtitled “War Symphony” simply because of what the world was undergoing during its creation, but its tone emphasizes triumph far more than suffering. Although not a born symphonist, Merikanto helped pave the way for those who were to come such as Marttinen and Aho (Englund was much more oriented towards Russian models). This tempestuous but still essentially tentative Symphony shows a young talent struggling to carve out an idiom for himself, which is exactly what he achieved during his glorious 1920s decade, the innovative peak of his career.


    This breakthrough is exemplified by Ekho , a 10-minute setting of an erotic late 19th-century Finnish poem depicting a Greek damsel pining for her Narcissus, who is otherwise preoccupied, as we know from the legend. The musical language which Merikanto created for this work (and many others, including his opera Juha , the symphonic poems Pan and The Abduction of Kyllikki as well as the phenomenal quasi-Schoenbergian Nonet and Triple Concerto) is one of incisively Expressionistic ecstasy embodied in sharply chromatic ambivalence unlike anything else in Finnish music. In his later decades Merikanto backed away from these daring accomplishments and adopted a more restrained neoclassical mode with strong nationalistic elements, as shown in the later (1952–53) and more audience-friendly Third Symphony.


    It is perfectly clear that every attempt has been made by all participants in this project to present these two radically different aspects of Merikanto in the best possible light. Soprano Anu Kamsi’s vocally deliquescent and technically sure delivery proves she fully deserves her current acclaim, while the Turku Philharmonic (Finland’s oldest orchestra), under its new conductor Petri Sakari, lives up to its venerable reputation. Alba’s sonic and production values have always been first class, and the prominent composer Jouni Kaipainen provides an insightful annotation. No one with even a passing interest in 20th-century Finnish music should overlook this release—or its predecessor.

    Tracklisting:

    1. Symphony no 2 in A major, Op. 19 "War Symphony" by Aarre Merikanto
    Conductor: Petri Sakari
    Orchestra/Ensemble: Turku Philharmonic Orchestra
    Period: 20th Century
    Written: 1918

    2. Ekho by Aarre Merikanto
    Performer: Anu Komsi (Soprano)
    Conductor: Petri Sakari
    Orchestra/Ensemble: Turku Philharmonic Orchestra
    Period: 20th Century

    Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011

    EAC extraction logfile from 6. May 2014, 17:43

    Anu Komsi, Turku Philharmonic Orchestra, Petri Sakari / Aarre Merikanto - Symphony No.2 & Ekho

    Used drive : HL-DT-STDVDRRW GWA-4164B Adapter: 5 ID: 0

    Read mode : Secure
    Utilize accurate stream : Yes
    Defeat audio cache : Yes
    Make use of C2 pointers : No

    Read offset correction : 102
    Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No
    Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
    Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
    Null samples used in CRC calculations : Yes
    Used interface : Native Win32 interface for Win NT & 2000

    Used output format : User Defined Encoder
    Selected bitrate : 896 kBit/s
    Quality : High
    Add ID3 tag : No
    Command line compressor : C:\Program Files\Exact Audio Copy\FLAC\FLAC.EXE
    Additional command line options : -V -8 %source%


    TOC of the extracted CD

    Track | Start | Length | Start sector | End sector
    ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––-
    1 | 0:00.00 | 14:15.40 | 0 | 64164
    2 | 14:15.40 | 8:03.67 | 64165 | 100456
    3 | 22:19.32 | 15:13.31 | 100457 | 168962
    4 | 37:32.63 | 9:31.05 | 168963 | 211792
    5 | 47:03.68 | 10:00.69 | 211793 | 256861


    Range status and errors

    Selected range

    Filename D:\temp\Music\Aarre Merikanto - Symphony No.2; Ekho\Aarre Merikanto - Symphony No.2 & Ekho.wav

    Peak level 94.6 %
    Extraction speed 3.7 X
    Range quality 100.0 %
    Test CRC 799BEB0A
    Copy CRC 799BEB0A
    Copy OK

    No errors occurred


    AccurateRip summary

    Track 1 accurately ripped (confidence 2) [D28A08B9] (AR v2)
    Track 2 accurately ripped (confidence 2) [8523AFBA] (AR v2)
    Track 3 accurately ripped (confidence 2) [40C88A0D] (AR v2)
    Track 4 accurately ripped (confidence 2) [968EABF8] (AR v2)
    Track 5 accurately ripped (confidence 2) [86B78A75] (AR v2)

    All tracks accurately ripped

    End of status report

    ==== Log checksum 9A2BC77E1761B1AC8370A3B14FED2F04B86AF4AEAE426AFB2E9FFD6DAFCF83A0 ====



    Thanks to the original releaser