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Einojuhani Rautavaara (b. 1928 in Finland) has a musical style that can only be described as molten. He has mixed all the post-modern impulses to fashion a music that's at once eerie and riveting. His Cantus Arctus (1972) is a concerto for birds and orchestra. Recorded bird sounds weave in and out of a mostly tonal, mostly melodic background. (Or maybe it's the other way around.) The String Quartet (1975) uses a twelve-tone row, with frequent sonic clashes, a trick Schnittke uses. But the Symphony 5 (1986) is an atmospheric dazzler. No one writes like Rautavaara; he outdoes all the post-moderns in Finland today. --Paul Cook