# Rautavaara - Piano Concerto No. 1 (1969) Avant-garde or Mainstream Serious?



## regenmusic (Oct 23, 2014)

Do you consider this avant-garde, too noisy to be in the canon of great classical music, or Mainstream Serious?

Not sure what a better word than "mainstream" is but I think you'll understand what I mean.





Einojuhani Rautavaara - Piano Concerto No. 1 (1969)


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

I do not consider it pure avant-garde. There are elements of tonal development and themes. It is a blend of avant-garde and early 20th century "modernism" (at that point in time).


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

The pianist isn't using his/her elbows on the keyboard, at least at the outset, so....questionable. Actually there's something about that music that sounds interesting to me, so thanks for posting it. Heck, I may end up buying the score and trying it out.


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## regenmusic (Oct 23, 2014)

So, for the many threads that talk about this subject without an example, he's an example people can weigh in on.


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## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

It's not more modern than Henry Cowell's music. I wouldn't call it avant-garde, he wasn't pushing many boundaries, just combining known techniques in an original way.


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## GucciManeIsTheNewWebern (Jul 29, 2020)

regenmusic said:


> So, for the many threads that talk about this subject without an example, he's an example people can weigh in on.


You're preaching to their choir here. There was a thread called "Great Avant-Garde vs. Mediocre Avant-Garde" and I was one of the very few people who actually responded to the prompt. -_____-

Why not actually use concrete examples in the music of what you're talking about? After all it is a music forum


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Not really addressing the OP, but looking at all that left-hand work, and considering it goes by so fast to be discernible, it seems to me that he's making the pianist work too hard.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

Rautavaara was a mix of Sibelius's Finnish traditions, avant-garde, 12 tone, minimalism and mysticism. It's not unusual to hear one or more of these influences in any of his music.


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## chu42 (Aug 14, 2018)

Rautavaara's 1st Concerto-one of my favorite works-was explicitly intended to be _anti_-avant garde, with the composer wishing to take a hiatus from his earlier serialist compositions. It is highly tonal and rather than being innovative, more of an organic extension of the Impressionist era and also shows some elements of Sibelius.

Of course, he would jump right back into the avant-garde with his 2nd concerto:


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## chu42 (Aug 14, 2018)

consuono said:


> The pianist isn't using his/her elbows on the keyboard, at least at the outset, so....questionable. Actually there's something about that music that sounds interesting to me, so thanks for posting it. Heck, I may end up buying the score and trying it out.


Perhaps you will eventually grow to enjoy more modern music. I recommend Ginastera 1:


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

The Rautavaara Concerto #1 represents the richness and fertility of the tonal music produced 1900-1950, and showing that almost 20 years later, that musical seam--so wide and so deep--has an almost infinite capacity for further exploitation. The concerto, to my ears, is soaked with Prokofiev's and Khachaturian's pianism especially--very Russian, very dramatic. The Scarlett Tong Zuo performance with the Yale Orchestra on YouTube is a stunner, with plenty of elbow use. It was videoed with a hand-held device, and the image slightly and rhythmically shifts with the breathing of the filmer, but one quickly ignores that and is lost in the music. A triumph!


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

chu42 said:


> Perhaps you will eventually grow to enjoy more modern music. I recommend Ginastera 1:


The toccata alone is worth the price of admission.


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