Because of its length, I expected to listen to this new Rautavaara collection in segments. But so involving was the music--and the music making--that I started playing CD 1 and went all the way through to the end of CD 2, scarcely realizing that nearly two hours had passed. Pelimannit ("The Fiddlers") opens the program with the nerve-jangling sound of descending tonal string harmonics corrupted by grindingly dissonant chords (à la Schnittke). But soon the lines smooth themselves out, giving the impression that the music was merely tuning itself up, for rest of the work is filled with wonderfully vibrant, folk-inspired music. The following Divertimento and the Suite for Strings continue pretty much in the same pleasing fashion.

The next three compositions form Rautavaara's Hungarian triptych. In Hommage à Liszt, he ingeniously uses the string orchestra to simulate cascading piano runs, while Epitaph for Béla Bartók explores that composer's mysterious side in a shadowy prelude and fugue. The most ambitious of the three pieces, Hommage à Kodály Zoltán, is based on a theme Rautavaara composed to the letters of Kodály's name. It's a brilliantly varied work that effectively and convincingly captures the Hungarian flavor of its subject.

Disc 2 changes the mood dramatically with its exploration of Rautavaara's darker, more serious, and highly personal side. The four Cantos are bracing and sometimes violently dramatic works--Nos. 1 & 2 (1960-61) utilize 12-tone techniques while in No. 3 (1972) Rautavaara begins looking beyond the limits of that method. With No. 4 (1992) the composer had arrived at his late style, a synthesis of all his earlier methods, resulting in a work that, like Cantus Articus and Piano Concerto No. 3, creates an atmosphere of ethereal, transcendent beauty. This is marvelously evoked by the Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra, whose musicians have become a clear medium for the composer's intentions, whether in the harsher music, the lighthearted works, or the more middle-ground pieces like Ballad for Harp and Strings, A Finnish Myth, or the rousing Ostrobothnian Polka that closes the program. Juha Kangas leads highly accomplished, idiomatic, powerful performances, all captured by Ondine in resplendent sound.

--Victor Carr Jr.