Kärki Konsertissa Panu Savolainen, Jaakko Kuusisto And Helsingin Kaupunginorkesteri

To date, Kalevi Aho has composed sixteen symphonies and twenty-eight concertos, several operas and a large number of chamber works – a rate of production which is all the more impressive considering the complexity and originality displayed by each new work. On this latest in a long series of BIS releases with Aho’s music, two of his most recent works are performed by the musicians of the Lapland Chamber Orchestra. The orchestra and its artistic director John Storgårds have collaborated with the composer on several projects, and the Concerto for Soprano Saxophone is a commission from the orchestra, at the suggestion of the Swedish saxophonist Anders Paulsson. A specialist on the soprano saxophone, Paulsson also demonstrated the instrument’s capabilities to Aho as part of his preparations.

Jean Sibelius & Magnus Lindberg - Violin Concertos
Lisa Batiashvili, violin / Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra - Sakari Oramo
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 262 MB | Full Artwork: 143 MB | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Sony Classical # 88697129362 | Country/Year: Germany 2007
Genre: Classical | Style: Romantic, 21st Century, Violin

…In 2001 Batiashvili appeared in a recording premiere of the Olli Mustonen Concerto for 3 violins, with fellow violinists Jaakko Kuusisto and Pekka Kuusisto, on the Ondine label. Over the next few years her career blossomed with major concert dates across Europe and the U.S. In August 2006 she premiered the Lindberg Concerto at Avery Fisher Hall, with the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, Louis Langrée conducting. Batiashvili signed a recording contract with Sony in 2007 and went on to record the Beethoven Violin Concerto for that label and a disc of works by Mozart and Britten. In 2008 Batiashvili gave the premiere in London of the Kancheli double concerto Broken Chant, for violin, oboe, and orchestra, with her husband François Leleux and the BBC Symphony Orchestra…

Violinist Pekka Kuusisto presents a new arrangement for string orchestra of Philip Glass’s String Quartet No. 3, which Glass derived from his epic film score Mishima. Pekka Kuusisto performs this new arrangement together with the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra, of which he is Artistic Director as of 2021.

'My apotheosis of the dance' is how Kalevi Aho describes his Symphony No.15. With two dance movements and rhythm a central element, the score calls for numerous percussion instruments, including non-Western ones such as bongos, darbuka, djembe and the riqq, an Arabian tambourine. The composer's interest in non-Western music and instruments has been evident in several recent works, such as his Symphony No. 14 (recorded on BIS-1686) and Oboe Concerto (BIS-1876). It also played an important part during the creation of Minea, composed as a concert opener for the Minnesota Orchestra on the initiative of Osmo Vänskä, who also conducts the work here.

With his sweet, subtly varied tone, lightly brushed bowing and imaginative phrasing, Kuusisto is vividly reponsive to the dancing playfulness of the Allegros and that uniquely Mozartian mixture of innocence and sensuous yearning in the slow movements. Tempi are fleet and buoyant yet never driven. (…) These performances, zestfully accompanied and warmly recorded, capture the poetry, excitement and coltish energy of these miraculous fruits of Mozart's teen years.