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The Symphonies of Joonas Kokkonen
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 January 2016
Extract
With the death of Joonas Kokkonen in October of 1996, Finland lost one of its most important post-World War II composers. Almost certainly, Kokkonen is most widely known outside Finland for his 1975 opera Viimeiset kiusaukset (Tlie Last Temptations). Yet his orchestral compositions such as the Cello Concerto (1969), the song cycle Lintuijen Tuonela (The Hades of the Birds, 1958–59), the Requiem (1981), the chamberorchestra work …Durch einen Spiegel… 1977), or such chamber works as the Piano Quintet (1953) or the String Quartets Nos.l (1959) and 3 (1976) demonstrate that masterpieces may be found in virtually every genre of Kokkonen's output. (Oddly, piano music represents a small and minor position in Kokkonen's oeuvre – a surprising fact given his accomplishments as a pianist.)
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References
1 We should note that Einar Englund had been briefly placed in an analogous position during the late 1940s, as the result of his first two neoclassical-styled symphonies from 1946 and 1948. His influence, however, waned in the late 1950s since he virtually ceased composing between 1955–1970, largely as a protest against what he believed were negative values represented by total serialism.