Horn Play

Widely regarded as one of today's most important composers of orchestral music, Kalevi Aho has written fifteen symphonies to date, but also twenty concertos. Indeed, he himself describes his on-going series of concertos for each of the main instruments in the Romantic symphony orchestra as 'one of the most important and most ambitious of my composition projects'. One of the latest additions to this series is the Horn Concerto, composed for the Finnish horn-player Annu Salminen who also performs it on the present recording……

Penderecki's international recognition began in 1959 at the Warsaw Autumn with the premieres of the works Strophen, Psalms of David, and Emanations, but the piece that truly brought him to international attention was Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima, written for 52 string instruments. Penderecki's compositions include operas, symphonies, choral works, as well as chamber and instrumental music. He has won many prestigious awards including Grammy Awards in 1987 and 1998 and 2001, and the Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition in 1992.

Widely regarded as one of today's most important composers of orchestral music, Kalevi Aho has written fifteen symphonies as well as over twenty concertos. The horn concerto is a one-movement work with a 'ritualistic' element: the horn’s first entries are heard from backstage, after which the soloist enters the stage, moving gradually from left to right before leaving the stage again towards the end.