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Osmo Vänskä, Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra - Isang Yun: Violin Concerto III; Chamber Symphony I; Silla (2022)

Osmo Vänskä, Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra - Isang Yun: Violin Concerto III; Chamber Symphony I; Silla (2022)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue & Log) ~ 302 Mb | Total time: 67:13 | Scans included
Classical | Label: BIS | # BIS-SACD-2642 | Recorded: 2021

At the end of a career spent between his native Korea and Germany, during which he produced works that span the musical traditions of both countries, Isang Yun expressed a wish to limit himself ‘to what is substantial, in order to transmit more peace, more goodness, more purity and warmth into this world’.
Osmo Vänskä, Minnesota Orchestra - Gustav Mahler: Symphony No.9 (2023)

Osmo Vänskä, Minnesota Orchestra - Gustav Mahler: Symphony No.9 (2023)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue & Log) ~ 328 Mb | Total time: 81:32 | Scans included
Classical | Label: BIS | # BIS-2476 SACD | Recorded: 2022

After a vast and emotionally intense first movement that shows an astonishing fluidity of form, theme, texture and tonality, ‘the most glorious thing Mahler has written’ according to Alban Berg, the second movement brings joy and playfulness and seems to evoke both an urban Straussian world and folk music cultures. To the bitter irony and anger of the third movement the last movement, a mystical Adagio, seems to respond with ineffable tenderness. Often regarded as the composer’s monumental – both in terms of scale and emotional scope – leave-taking of the world, the Ninth Symphony can also be understood as a requiem for his daughter who died a few years before, an acknowledgment of the transience of life, a memorial to Vienna, an evocation of fading Austrian and Bohemian landscapes, a homage to a vanishing European cultural world.
Osmo Vänskä - Aho: The Chamber Music for Clarinet (2012) [Official Digital Download 24/44.1]

Osmo Vänskä - Aho: The Chamber Music for Clarinet (2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/44.1 kHz | Time - 75:07 minutes | 678 MB
Studio Master, Official Digital Download | Artwork: Digital booklet

Renowned for his rich production in the field of orchestral music, Kalevi Aho is also a prolific composer for chamber forces. Here three works spanning two decades have been combined, with the Sonata for two accordions originating in 1984 as a Sonata for solo accordion described by the composer in his own liner notes as ‘comparable in aspiration with Liszt’s most virtuosic piano works’.
YL Male Voice Choir, Minnesota Orchestra & Osmo Vänskä - Jean Sibelius: Kullervo, Op. 7 - Olli Kortekangas: Migrations (2017)

YL Male Voice Choir, Minnesota Orchestra & Osmo Vänskä - Jean Sibelius: Kullervo, Op. 7 - Olli Kortekangas: Migrations
Classical | WEB FLAC (tracks) & d. booklet | 114:21 min | 471 MB
Label: BIS | Tracks: 13 | Rls.date: 2017

Some 150 years ago what is sometimes called ‘The Great Migration’ of Finns to the United States began. Many of the Finns settled in the Mid-West, and especially in the so-called ‘Finn Hook’, consisting of parts of Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin. To celebrate this, the Minnesota Orchestra under its Finnish music director Osmo Vänskä commissioned the composer Olli Kortekangas to compose a work on the theme of migration, of a scale and nature suitable for performance alongside Jean Sibelius’s great Kullervo.
Stephen Hough, Minnesota Orchestra, Osmo Vänskä - Tchaikovsky: Three Piano Concertos, Concert Fantasia (2010)

Stephen Hough, Minnesota Orchestra, Osmo Vänskä - Tchaikovsky: Three Piano Concertos, Concert Fantasia (2010)
XLD | FLAC (tracks+.cue, log) | Covers + Digital Booklet | 02:21:07 | 578 MB
Genre: Classical | Label: Hyperion | Catalog: 67711

Listeners who are sick of Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto, its bombastic opening, its pretentious ending, and all its pointless filigree in between, should hear this recording of that concerto plus the composer's other works for piano and orchestra by English pianist Stephen Hough, because they will be totally, completely, and utterly blown away. It's not just because Hough nails the notes technically or plumbs the depths interpretively, although he does both with a mastery and a dedication that rival Richter.
Osmo Vänskä, Lahti Symphony Orchestra - Kalevi Aho: Symphony No.1, Hiljaisuus, Violin Concerto (1989)

Osmo Vänskä, Lahti Symphony Orchestra - Kalevi Aho: Symphony No.1, Hiljaisuus, Violin Concerto (1989)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue & Log) ~ 280 Mb | Total time: 61:45 | Scans included
Classical | Label: BIS | # BIS-CD-369 | Recorded: 1989

Given Sibelius’s reputation as one of the great symphonists of the last century, contemporary Finnish composers may be forgiven for feeling a little overshadowed. Fortunately for the young Aho, Rautavaara’s advice and support proved decisive in shaping this symphony, which began life as a string quartet.
The work is in four movements, the mysterious opening and ascending brass figures of the Andante strongly reminiscent of Shostakovich. Indeed, this is confirmed by the noted music publisher Fennica Gehrman, in a short article on the Finnish Musical Information Centre website.
Osmo Vänskä, Lahti Symphony Orchestra - Kalevi Aho: Symphony No.8, Pergamon (1994)

Osmo Vänskä, Lahti Symphony Orchestra - Kalevi Aho: Symphony No.8, Pergamon (1994)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue & Log) ~ 243 Mb | Total time: 61:54 | Scans included
Classical | Label: BIS | # BIS-CD-646 | Recorded: 1994

Kalevi Aho (b. 1949) has stated that his works have an "abstract plot" driving his music from behind the scenes. His series of (so far) eleven symphonies certainly testifies to this statement; each of his symphonies seems to set out from a fixed point, always to confront the impassable, and always trying to reconcile that conflict in the most poignant and personal of ways.
Osmo Vänskä, Lahti Symphony Orchestra - Kalevi Aho: Symphony No. 2, Symphony No. 7 (1998)

Osmo Vänskä, Lahti Symphony Orchestra - Kalevi Aho: Symphony No. 2, Symphony No. 7 (1998)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue & Log) ~ 269 Mb | Total time: 68:17 | Scans included
Classical | Label: BIS | # BIS-CD-936 | Recorded: 1998

Second Symphony is also a youthful work – the composer was just 21 at the time – but it differs from the First in that it’s cast in a single movement. After the premiere in 1973 Aho decided to rework the middle section, a task he didn’t attempt until 1995. The result is a compact, tightly structured piece – it’s a triple fugue – which the composer candidly admits was intended as an antidote to some of the more ‘difficult’ music of the 1960s.
Osmo Vänskä, Lahti Symphony Orchestra - Kalevi Aho: Symphony No.9,  Concerto for cello & orchestra (1995)

Osmo Vänskä, Lahti Symphony Orchestra - Kalevi Aho: Symphony No.9, Concerto for cello & orchestra (1995)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue & Log) ~ 220 Mb | Total time: 61:59 | Scans included
Classical | Label: BIS | # BIS-CD-706 | Recorded: 1993, 1995

In her liner-notes Anne Weller points out that the Eighth and Ninth symphonies – paired at the latter’s premiere – are musical opposites, one dark the other light. A quick run-through of the Ninth rather confirms this, with Christian Lindberg’s mellifluous entry in the first movement quite without angst or aggression. Even the animated orchestration suggests an altogether more optimistic mood. In fact just listen to the passage that begins at 2:44, a lightly sprung piece of baroquerie with some beautifully articulated playing from the soloist.
Osmo Vänskä, Lahti Symphony Orchestra - Kalevi Aho: Symphony No.10, Rejoicing of the Deep Waters (1997)

Osmo Vänskä, Lahti Symphony Orchestra - Kalevi Aho: Symphony No.10, Rejoicing of the Deep Waters (1997)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue & Log) ~ 226 Mb | Total time: 58:44 | Scans included
Classical | Label: BIS | # BIS-CD-856 | Recorded: 1996, 1997

Aho’s opera Insect Life may have been rejected at first but that didn’t stop him dabbling in the genre. Rejoicing of the Deep Waters is based on his opera, Before We All Have Drowned, which has since been performed in Helsinki and Lūbeck. And even though it was written for the city of Lahti’s 90th anniversary it’s certainly not celebratory in tone. In fact the work begins with a lovelorn surgical nurse throwing herself off a bridge, the ensuing story told in a series of flashbacks.