The Finnish composer Rautavaara, 80 this year, wrote his Manhattan Trilogy for the 2004 centenary of the Juilliard School in New York, where Sibelius once sent him on a scholarship.
The three movements represent the student’s passage from idealism to responsibility. Conducting, Leif Segerstam moulds a comfortable Daydreams, summoning a sweetly played violin solo, and an anxious Nightmares, highlighting the nervy bass clarinet and slimy trombones. He measures the steady tread of Dawn as if it were inevitable, sobering reality. Rautavaara’s 1961 Symphony No 3 follows, with Segerstam managing to wring from it a sense of both epic drama and filigree detail.
(Ondine)