Rautavaara: reviews of Rubáiyát for Gerald Finley
Rautavaara has created two new vocal works for baritone Gerald Finley, a song-cycle based on the Persian Rubáiyát, and new orchestrations of six Sibelius songs entitled In the Stream of Life.
Einojuhani Rautavaara’s new song-cycle for baritone Gerald Finley, setting poetry from Omar Khayyám’s Rubáiyát, was premiered at the Wigmore Hall in London in May. Using the classic English translation by Edward Fitzgerald, the new work captures the Persian poet’s summons to “Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die”, either viewed as a cry for hedonistic excess or a simple encouragement to “seize the day”.
The Financial Times described how “richly coloured cascades of notes tumble from the piano part, like a rainbow seen through a waterfall, and the singer’s long, lyrical lines are carried on a flood of sound.”
“Rautavaara’s characteristic sound-worlds – by turns mystical, meditative, rhapsodic – are a fitting complement to Khayyám’s lyric quatrains which, rather than delineating a narrative, present the profound feelings and philosophical reflections of the poet on subjects such as religion, love and death.”
Opera Today
Twin versions of Rubáiyát will co-exist, with piano or with chamber orchestra. The orchestral version is co-commissioned by the Helsinki Philharmonic and the Feeney Trust for the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and the UK premiere will be in the CBSO's 2015/16 season with Gerald Finley as soloist.
Rautavaara has recently orchestrated a set of Sibelius songs which received first performances by Gerald Finley in Bergen and Oslo in March with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Edward Gardner. Bearing the title In the Stream of Life, the six songs include poetry by Ernst Josephson, Richard Dehmel and Johan Ludvig Runeberg in Finnish, German and Swedish. The group ends with Svarta rosor (Black Roses), one of Sibelius’s most familiar songs, especially popular with Scandinavian audiences.
> Further information on Work: Rubáiyát (version for voice and piano)
Image: the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám