Angelic Visions

Another disk of music by Rautavaara. Symphony No 7 Angel of Light and a second piece called Angels and Visitations. played by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra conducted by Hannu Koivula. Rautavaara has written many works in an "Angel series". Apparently, the references should not be taken in any pictorial or programmatic way but more in a mythical or spiritual way. Certainly there is nothing cutesy about the angels depicted, they exude instead that sense of power and awe that is central to the ancient angel culture but often overlooked. As to the works here, the symphony is a meditative work on the whole with nods to his predecessors in Nordic classicism such as Nielsen and Sibelius and that same clean sense of a northern landscape. Angels and Visitations is a harsher more disjointed piece, leaving a sense that the visitation was not necessarily one meant to bring comfort. There is nothing "budget" about the quality of the interpetations in these Naxos releases.