KAIPAINEN, J.: Symphony No. 3 / Bassoon Concerto
Virtanen, Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra, Lintu
ODE1089-2

Each Friday we select a track from a Naxos Music Group album released twenty years ago to provide the accompaniment for five minutes of your downtime.

This week’s pick from the Ondine label is from the Bassoon Concerto by Finnish composer, journalist and writer Jouni Kaipainen (b. 1956). The second movement’s concept derives from a musical play for children titled Hämärän maa (Land of twilight), where a rag doll becomes animated and dances with a piccolo; in the concerto, the piccolo dances with the solo bassoon, about which Kaipainen noted: “I feel that the bassoon is a far more versatile instrument than we are led to believe from school concerts onwards. To regard it only as the ‘clown of the orchestra’ is to disregard a large portion of its potential – or, at the very least, we should then understand the term ‘clown’ as a mixture of comedy and tragedy in the manner of Don Quixote, Chaplin, Pierrot or the characters of the commedia dell’arte in general.”