Einojuhani Rautavaara’s Cantus Arcticus: Concerto for Birds and Orchestra
In 1915, while working on his Fifth Symphony, Jean Sibelius ventured into the Finnish landscape where he saw sixteen swans take flight into the midday sky, circle, and disappear “into the solar haze like a gleaming silver ribbon.” The experience inspired the pivotal theme of the Symphony’s final movement, which emerges majestically in the horns. Einojuhani Rautavaara (1928–2016), perhaps the most significant Finnish composer of the second half of the 20th century, …