Synopsis

Do you believe in angels? It seems 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, 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,” he wrote. When 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. 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. 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,” he explained.

Music Played in Today's Program

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