Kimmo Hakola’s Clarinet Concerto begins in a brassy panoply of hard-driving rhythms that would be perfectly at home in the film score for The Matrix. The clarinet leaps out of this frenzy into a series of acrobatic maneuvers that exploit the full capabilities of the instrument. It’s quite impressive–though the cadenza, with its playfully silly writing, is less so. Kari Kriikku executes all of this with enthusiasm, daring, and stunning musicianship. Nor does Kriikku shy away from the occasional “ugly” sounds the composer asks for, such as the raspy, honking tones that constitute the sour in the otherwise sweetly singing adagio (which features a main theme so agreeably lyrical it could have been a pop tune).
The third movement’s bristling 7/8 meter makes it sound initially like jazz, but it’s actually Hakola’s distillation of oriental dance. The excitement comes to an abrupt end with the sound of a cheering crowd, signalling the start of the finale. Titled “Kahsene” (Yiddish for “wedding”), the Jewish nuptial celebration gets under way with a lively dance, during which Kriikku makes a most convincing Klezmer player. He also sounds suitably mournful in the movement’s slow central section, then whups it up in the rousing and rowdy conclusion. The problem is that Hakola’s finale, stirring as it is, sounds stylistically out of context with the rest of the work, especially the quasi-modernist first movement. Still, the Finnish Radio Symphony performs with remarkable panache and precision under Sakari Oramo’s direction.
Verdoyances crépuscules (verdant twilight) moves through a succession of sustained chords played by the full orchestra, abetted by organ and flowing harps, giving the feeling of a voyage into outer space (think Holst’s Neptune meets John Williams’ Close Encounters of the Third Kind). After this, Kriikku is back for a solo turn in Hakola’s Diamond Street. The piece recalls the klezmer-style writing of the concerto finale, and Kriikku once again proves an accomplished and spirited performer. Ondine’s recording is a touch bright, but it powerfully conveys the music’s considerable dynamic impact.
