by Ben Hogwood. Picture by Laivakoira, courtesy of Wikipedia

On this day ten years ago, Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara died in Helsinki at the age of 87.

Rautavaara’s legacy is impressive, a natural beneficiary of the legacy of Jean Sibelius – whose eye he caught with the 1953 work A Requiem in Our Time, for brass and percussion – while also innovating in many traditional musical forms. These include the symphony – with his seventh, Angel of Light, especially popular on release by Ondine in 1997 – but also the concerto and in music for the stage and the chamber music hall.

Rautavaara’s musical language varied between stages of his career, as rather like Arvo Pärt he showed himself to be a versatile composer capable of flirting with the avant garde as much as writing with deceptive simplicity.

One of Rautavaara’s standout pieces is the Cantus Arcticus, published in 1972 with the subtitle Concerto for birds and orchestra. The birds in question are recorded whooper swans, whose calls are both the impetus for the melodic figures and the orchestral responses. You can listen to that, and the Angel of Light symphony, below:

Published post no.2,960 – Tuesday 27 July 2026