Do you believe in Angels?

It seems the late Finnish composer Einojuhanni Rautavaara did – and produced a number of orchestral pieces with evocative titles like Angels and Visitations or Angel of Light. One of these, a concerto for double-bass and orchestra titled, Angel of Dusk, had its premiere performance on today's date in 1981, in Helsinki.

“Looking out the window of a plane,” writes Rautavaara, ”I saw a strikingly shaped cloud, gray but pierced with color, rising above the Atlantic horizon. Suddenly, the words Angel of Dusk came to mind.” When Rautavaara was asked to write a double-bass concerto he recalled the vision of the cloud and had his title.

In an interview, Rautavaara spoke of a scientist who wrote that ‘the existence of music is an intellectual scandal’. Rautavaara explained, “With that he meant that there is a message in music, and yet there are no words for that message. It’s from another world. For a scientist that is a scandal. For me, it’s a wonderful thing.”

“In the end, I agree with Carl Jung,” said Rautavaara. “The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purposes through him.”

Einojuhani Rautavaara (1928 - 2016) Angel of Dusk Olli Kosonen, double bass; Finnish Radio Symphony; Leif Segerstam, conductor. Finlandia 009