AULIS SALLINEN (b.1935): Chamber Music I for String Orchestra, Op. 38, Chamber Music II for Alto Flute and String Orchestra, Op. 41, Chamber Music III for Cello and String Orchestra “The Nocturnal Dances of Don Juanquixote”, Op. 58, Chamber Music IV for Piano and String Orchestra “Metamorphoses of the Elegy for Sebastian Knight”, Op. 79, Chamber Music V for Piano and String Orchestra “Barabbas Variations”, Op. 80a (realized Ralf Gothóni [b.1946])*, Chamber Music VI for String Quartet and String Orchestra “3 invitations au voyage”, Op. 88*, Chamber Music VII for Wind Quintet and String Orchestra “Cruselliana”, Op. 93, Chamber Music VIII for Cello and String Orchestra “The Trees, All Their Green”, Op. 94*. * - World Premiere Recordings.

Description: Chamber Music is the slightly misleading title given by Sallinen to a very significant genre of works in his output, to which he has returned repeatedly over a period of more than 35 years, which are now gathered together here for the first time. All are in Sallinen's instantly recognisable brand of tonality, with clearly established key centers but a constant sense of restless instability, and his familiar rhythmic vitality, frequently ostinato-propelled. They run the gamut from overtly humorous - the playful Cruselliana, with its woodwind soloists, relatively straightforward neoclassicism, and unexpected excursion into jazz, and the delightful Nocturnal Dances, whose flamboyant compound hero dances to jazz, foxtrot and tango in the course of a night's revelry - to the more sombre and obsessive, minor key idiom that predominates in the symphonies and the operas other than Palatsi, especially the uneasy Sebastian Knight work, after Nabukov, a tense and edgy work based on two much earlier ones, or the austere and focused No. 6. The most recent, from 2009, confirms the diversity of the series; this is a richly eloquent, impassioned elegy for the composer's sometime librettist Paavo Haavikko, autumnal and pained, yet retaining a sinewy resilience that leads one to hope that this sequence of works may not yet have reached its conclusion. 2 CDs. Arto Noras (cello), Alexis Roman (alto flute), Jyväskylä Sinfonia Wind Quintet, Meta4 String Quartet, Jyväskylä Sinfonia; Ville Matvejeff (piano IV and conductor), Ralf Gothóni (piano V and conductor V & VIII).