Among the impressive works by composer Einojuhani Rautavaara, who passed away two years ago and who would have celebrated his 90th birthday in 2018, there are about ten operas, eight symphonies, about a dozen different concertos, large quantities of chamber music, and a very large number of a capella choral works, with his writing stretching from 1960 to 2014. In this superb album of sacred works, performed by the excellent Finnish Radio Chamber Choir with Timo Nuoranne as the choirmaster (1990s), we discover the full extent of Rautavaara’s creative ability. One thing that remained a constant throughout his long career; his magnificent choral writing, which is polyphonic and complex though always sounds extremely natural. The avant-garde music that shook the planet from the sixties onwards hardly left a mark on Rautavaara, who experimented with it for a while though quickly abandoned the genre. There are hints of neoclassicism, post-modernism and neo-Romanticism, lovely words that in fact don’t carry much meaning, they describe music that looks to display beauty and emotion. Here, all these works are overflowing with exactly that, especially when performed with such fervor. Beautiful! © SM/Qobuz