Kalevi Aho Double Concerto for cor anglais, harp and orchestra; Triple Concerto for violin, cello, piano and chamber orchestra Dimitri Mestdag (cor anglais), Anneleen Lenaerts (harp); Storioni Trio; Antwerp Symphony Orchestra/Olari Elts BIS BIS-2426 (CD/SACD) 59:11 mins
Finn Kalevi Aho (b1949) has composed an astonishing number of concertos since his first, for violin, in 1981. The current total is some 37 across a vast range of instruments, including six double concertos. Of these, the 2014 Double Concerto for cor anglais, harp and orchestra is recorded here alongside the – so far – sole Triple Concerto, for violin, cello, piano and orchestra (2018). The works are markedly different in character, yet both exhibit an underlying enigmatic quality against which an array of moods and textures are explored through an ever-changing post-tonal soundworld. Both are performed with clarity and sweep by the soloists and Antwerp Symphony Orchestra under Olari Elts.
Most intriguing in form is the Double Concerto. Cast in four, through-composed movements, the first is as long as the following three together, and finds the cor anglais (Dimitri Mestdag) and harp (Anneleen Lenaerts) slowly emerging from what Aho describes as ‘a distant wind’ in an ‘empty…cold’ landscape. As unpitched sounds coalesce into chords and motifs, build and then finally subside at the work’s close, the soloists at once shape and respond to the changing environment without being subsumed or dominated.
The Triple Concerto forces are more equally pitted – and emanate immediate warmth thanks to the lullaby, dedicated to Aho’s granddaughter, which suffuses the first movement and reappears at points in the ensuing three. Yet, through contrasting emotional terrain, there is ambivalence here too in a bracing melancholy which recalls Shostakovich in the Storioni Trio’s lyrical hands.
Steph Power
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