Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra & Sakari Oramo & Hannu Lintu - Hameenniemi, E.: Symphony No. 3 / Viola Concerto (CD)

Release Date: 01/01/06

Author: Guy Rickards / GramophoneEero Hämeenniemi is perhaps the least well known member of the group of composers, born

Author: Guy Rickards / GramophoneEero Hämeenniemi is perhaps the least well known member of the group of composers, born in the early 1950s, who studied with Paavo Heininen at the Sibelius Academy. Despite some impressive successes (1994's UNESCO Composers' Rostrum Prize, for example), he has not achieved the sustained worldwide success enjoyed by Saariaho, Salonen and Gramophone Contemporary Music Award winner Magnus Lindberg. This may be because his music remained closer to Heininen's manner, wedding traditional forms such as the symphony and concerto to a modernist language rooted in serialism.But there was always more to Hämeenniemi's music (and to Heininen's) than dour dodecaphony, as Ondine's disc of his first two symphonies (1982-83, 1988) and Violin Concerto (1990-91) proved. The Third Symphony (1999) shows that he has evolved a postmodernist free-tonal style of some appeal. Cast like the First in a single movement in two distinct sections, it is built almost exclusively from a single theme that acts as a thematic reservoir as well as the basis for variations. As much fantasia as symphony, the work impresses with its calm intensity, not unlike Pettersson but less expressively obsessive.The composer describes his symphony and Viola Concerto (2000) as 'sister works' and they do project a sense of kinship. Yet both are independent, built from different material - though sharing an exotic, almost modal quality at times - and finely scored. The works are played with great feeling by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, with Tommi Aalto a fine viola soloist and Oramo and Lintu exemplary interpreters. Alba's sound has presence and depth. My one regret is that a third Hämeenniemi work could not be added to extend my enjoymen