Recorded at the only extant Spanish organ dating from the time of Aguilera de Heredia (16th century)

The booklet contains liner notes by the artist about the composer and works, a biography of the artist, and information about the organ including a stop list

Sebastián Aguilera de Heredia has gone down in history of Spanish music as one of the most important figures of the transition from the Renaissance to the Baroque, comparable to the Dutch composer Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck (1562-1621), who was his contemporary. His style reflects the polyphonic tradition of the Spanish Renaissance combined with elements of the early Baroque, thus forming the bridge between Antonio de Cabezón (1510-1566) and Francisco Correa de Araujo (1584-1654), the most important exponents of the organ school in Spain in the Renaissance and the Baroque respectively.

Aguilera adopts a style in which the serious counterpoint of vocal polyphony, of which he was an accomplished master, is infused with elements from popular music and dance forms and rhythms.

Played by Miguel del Barco Díaz, a specialist in early Spanish organ music, on the only surviving historic organ from the time of De Heredia, the Renaissance organ of Santa María de Garrovillas de Alconétar, Cáceres, Spain, the technical specifications of which are included in the booklet.

EGUNGUN: EARTH-SHATTERING PERCUSSION

Ekkozone Records proudly presents the Valencia-based SoXXI Percussion Group and their decade-spanning collaboration with Louis Franz Aguirre (b. 1968), one of the foremost Latin American composers of today.

EGUNGUN features premiere recordings of Aguirre’s ground-breaking percussion sextets, a singular body of work which conjures up the composer’s mystical-religious universe. Elements from traditional Afro-Cuban percussion music, Indian classical music and Iannis Xenakis’s percussion writing are some of the sources that Aguirre draws upon, yet his musical language is wholly original.

Visceral and highly dramatic, the five compositions on EGUNGUN encompass every conceivable dynamic nuance, from evocative gongs and incantations of ancient Yoruba texts to terrifying textures, screams, and a profusion of drums and unconventional metallic percussion sounds, including the unheard-of and stunningly captured sound of electric hammer drills drilling into car rims!

EGUNGUN is the follow-up to Ekkozone’s latest release, ORULA, which was picked as one of the best albums of 2023 by the leading Danish music magazine Seismograf.

The Neapolitan school of instrumental music and its links with the rest of Europe in the eighteenth century – this is at the heart of Quartetto Vanvitelli’s activities. After concentrating on the work of the composer Michele Mascitti of Abruzzo, an outstanding figure representing Italian music in France, the quartet now turns to a composer-violinist from Sardinia, Giuseppe (Joseph) Agus (1722-1798), who achieved success in London and Paris in the second half of the 18th century. Like Mascitti, he studied in Naples, then lived in London from the late 1740s, coming into direct contact with the most important protagonists of 18th-century English music: George Frederic Handel, Thomas Arne, Johann Christian Bach. Working as a violinist in the theatres and concert halls of the English capital, Agus published various instrumental collections and participated in collective works with music by Handel, Arne and Hasse. Even though his artistry was appreciated in London, Agus moved to Paris in the 1770s, where he published a few compositions and taught at the Conservatoire until his death in 1798.

The unique instrumentation of the three works in this album was pioneered by the innovative Lou Harrison, whose 1959 concerto encapsulates his culturally wide-ranging aesthetic. More conventional instruments work alongside calibrated extras such as wash tubs and flowerpots in a work of color, languorous elegance and kinetic energy. The companion works were composed in its honor: Robert Xavier Rodríguez’s Xochiquetzal evokes the ancient Mayan world in imaginary folk music to form a synthesis of time periods and cultures, while the economical serenity of Kati Agócs’s concerto also includes bitonal effects and zesty syncopation.

Internationally acclaimed for his music for orchestra (17 symphonies and 31 concertos to date), Kalevi Aho has also composed chamber and solo works. The present disc combines six such pieces, ranging across the composer’s career. The earliest work on the disc is the Bach-inspired Sonata for solo violin from 1973, reminding us that during his years at the Sibelius Aacademy (1968 – 71), Aho studied the violin as well as composition. Another early piece, Prelude, Toccata and Postlude, also started out as a solo work – this time for the cello – before developing into a duo. From the other end, chronologically speaking, is the ample Piano Sonata No. 2 from 2016, with a duration of some 25 minutes. This time it is Beethoven who has provided inspiration, and the composer describes the work as ‘a commentary on the Hammerklavier Sonata, in which Beethoven’s motifs are frequently “misquoted” and developed in a different direction.’ The sonata closes the programme but not before giving us an opportunity to hear three further works involving the violin – a second solo piece, In memoriam Pehr Henrik Nordgren, written in memory of Aho’s fellow composer and friend, Lamento for two violins and Halla (‘frost’) for violin and piano. Performing these works are four highly respected Finnish musicians, the violinists (and brothers) Jaakko and Pekka Kuusisto, Samuli Peltonen (cello) and Sonja Fräki, pianist and Aho specialist.

REVIEW:

The two pieces written to mourn fellow musicians are, in fact, the best. Lamento was created for the funeral of the violinist Sakari Laukola, who died young in 2001. Jaakko Kuusisto’s sincerity obvious and his tone particularly strong and beautiful high up.

– Gramophone

Concertante works featuring the recorder, tenor saxophone and accordion are few and far between. Stimulated by daring soloists, the prolific Finnish composer Kalevi Aho has composed such works, contributing in his own way to the development of an original and attractive repertoire. The Concerto for Recorder requires the soloist to play four types of recorder, from bass to sopranino. The work explores extended techniques and also does not shy away from flashbacks to the golden age of the instrument. Aho received the initial impetus for his Concerto for tenor saxophone after a concert by Esa Pietilä. Aho wrote a concerto with contrasting sections that gradually exploits the full potential of the tenor saxophone and also makes use of an oriental goblet drum (darabuka) that sometimes also takes centre stage. The origins of the Sonate Concertante for accordion and strings goes back to Aho’s first Sonata for accordion of 1984. Noting its orchestral character, soloist Janne Valkeajoki suggested making a concertante version with strings. Here, Aho sought to extend the technical possibilities of the instrument to the maximum and to write for it a work of astounding virtuosity, like Franz Liszt’s most demanding piano compositions.

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. The Quintet for Winds and Piano was composed just over a year before the concerto and is here heard in a performance by the pianist Vainö Jalkanen, and woodwind players from the Lapland orchestra. The reason for the unusual combination of instruments is that the work was intended as a companion piece to Mozart’s quintet for the same forces. Closing the album, finally, is the almost 10-minute long Solo I for violin, the first in the composer’s series of virtuosic solo pieces for each of the instruments of the orchestra. It was composed in 1975 and receives a performance from another longtime Aho collaborator, the violinist Jaakko Kuusisto, who has previously performed the solo part of the composer’s Symphony No.3 for violin and orchestra.

Although the Finnish composer Kalevi Aho is best known as a symphonist, his constantly expanding catalogue includes numerous concertos as well as countless chamber works and arrangements of works by other composers. This disc brings together works from these three genres.

The Guitar Concerto, dedicated to Ismo Eskelinen, posed many challenges for Aho, who is not a guitarist himself. It is a seven-movement work exploring the different ways the guitar can be used – sometimes with far from traditional techniques – and exploring its sonic possibilities.

The Quintet for Horn and String Quartet was commissioned by Ilkka Puputti, who had previously premièred Aho’s Solo X for horn. Particularly demanding for the soloist, the quintet explores various atmospheres, in turns mysterious, whimsical, dramatic and dance-like.

Contrapunctus XIV from Johann Sebastian Bach’s Art of the Fugue was left unfinished owing to the composer’s declining health. As he was dissatisfied with previous attempts to complete it, Aho decided to write his own, aiming to remain true to Bach’s style. This completion exists in several versions, including the one for string orchestra heard here, expertly performed by the Lapland Chamber Orchestra conducted by John Storgårds.

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. The one-movement work differs from Aho's other concertos in that it includes what the composer describes as 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.

In the Concerto for Theremin, there is also a theatrical element, this time springing from the nature of the instrument itself. Invented in 1920, the theremin is the world's first electronic instrument, and consists of two antennae, both of which respond to the movements of the player's hand in the air. The instrument is played without being touched, and Aho describes the experience of hearing it as 'magical – the soloist is like a magician, a weaver of spells, producing music just by moving his hands without touching the instrument at all.' After having been introduced to the theremin by Carolina Eyck, and deciding to write a work for her and the Lapland Chamber Orchestra, this 'shamanistic aspect' led Aho to conceive of 'Eight Seasons': a concerto in eight movements, played without a break, and based on the traditional division of the year by the Sami, the indigenous people of Lapland. The wide range of sounds and effects available on the theremin are used by Aho to depict seasonal events such as the first frost, the melting of the ice and the midnight sun, and his score also exploits Carolina Eyck's unusual ability to simultaneously sing and play the theremin.

This disc also includes a video clip, playable on your computer, with Carolina Eyck’s introduction to the theremin and to Kalevi Aho’s concerto.

Having broken off work on a second violin concerto in 2012, the prolific Finnish composer Kalevi Aho only returned to the project after being contacted by the violinist Elina Vähälä. While aware of the weight of tradition and eager to avoid the pitfalls of violinistic clichés, Aho nevertheless wrote a virtuoso work dominated by the soloist, who is offered many possibilities to realise her own interpretative conception. The orchestral part was specifically composed for the Kymi Sinfonietta with its sound in mind. With his second cello concerto, Aho also wanted to write a piece that orchestras of the size of a sinfonietta could include in their programmes. Here too the solo writing is particularly well suited to the instrument. The youngest winner of the International Tchaikovsky Competition in 2015, cellist Jonathan Roozeman takes on this work in five movements played without interruption and in the last section delivers a cadenza as unusual as it is clever. The Kymi Sinfonietta is conducted here by Olari Elts, a champion of contemporary Baltic composers.

REVIEWS:

The music of composer Kalevi Aho is difficult to categorize among the various schools of the day. It is broadly expressive, and in these two concertos, Aho uses virtuosity in a thoroughly Romantic way. Yet the rigor of their construction is of a thoroughly modern kind. Consider the solo passage in the middle of the first movement of the Violin Concerto No. 2. It is… what, exactly? A cadenza? Aho uses the word in his informative notes, but it is really more of a distillation of what has happened previously. The entire movement is filled with powerfully difficult violin writing.

The edgy Violin Concerto and the lyrical, rather moody Cello Concerto are quite different in character, but both balance complex instrumental writing with long orchestral passages in inventive ways. The Violin Concerto has the unusual feature of having been written not only for its soloist, Elina Vähälä, but also for its orchestra, the Kymi Sinfonietta, and it holds together tightly; both works were conceived in chamber orchestra terms. The Kymi Sinfonietta is a remarkable example of the deep bench of Finnish orchestral music. Both of these works ought to be more widely played in concert, and it may be that this fine recording will help make that happen.

-- AllMusic.com

Concertos for cor anglais are few and far between, and harp concertos aren’t very common either. In combining the two, Kalevi Aho has come up with a true rarity – possibly the only double concerto in existence for these two instruments. Composed in 2014, the work was commissioned by the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra for two of its solo players: Anneleen Lenaerts and Dimitri Mestdag, who also perform it here. The work is characteristically eclectic, making the most of the sonic possibilities of the solo instruments, but also of the orchestral palette. The Antwerp Symphony Orchestra is no newcomer to Aho’s music, having previously recorded his concertos for trombone and trumpet. On the present disc, it also provides support for the Storioni Trio, in the Triple Concerto for violin, cello, piano and chamber orchestra, a joint commission by the trio and the orchestra. In 2017, as Aho started work on the concerto, his granddaughter was born. Having written a lullaby for her, he decided to use that as the core melodic material of the piece. The lullaby is heard several times in the first movement, which is quite tonal and very dreamlike. It also features in the movements that follow, while the harmonic language becomes more complex. Aho himself describes the work as having ‘a general atmosphere full of joy and positive (sometimes quite virtuosic) energy.’

REVIEW:

The Finnish composer Kalevi Aho is amazingly prolific. Not only are there, so far, seventeen symphonies and five operas, but also no fewer than thirty-seven concertos. Here we have two of them.

The Double Concerto for cor anglais and harp begins very quietly, so quietly in fact that at first I thought there was something wrong with my player while sounds like background noises started emerging. However, the two solo instruments do enter and gradually the work gathers definition and then rhythmic bite. There is a cadenza for the two instruments before the music subsides. This first movement is as long as the remaining three together. The second movement is a short cadenza for the harp alone, a most attractive passage, which leads into a brisk and exciting allegro. The finale is again short and quiet and we return to something like the mood of the beginning.

The Triple Concerto for violin, cello and piano is a more traditional combination, and the listener will at once think of Beethoven’s concerto for the same combination. Aho is obviously aware of this and does something quite different. For a start he uses a chamber orchestra, with strings and just two wind instruments. He rarely employs his soloists as a group together, but writes more in the concerto grosso kind of idiom, with a good deal of interplay between the soloists and the orchestra. If this sounds rather like Martinů, this is deliberate, and I was several times reminded of the Czech master in hearing this work. It is based on a lullaby he wrote for his granddaughter Matilda, which used the musical letters in her name. This comes several times in the dreamy and atmospheric first movement. This is followed by an energetic Presto, then another mysterious slow movement and a finale which starts slowly but soon speeds up.

The performers here are a mainly Belgian team, and they were all involved in the premieres apart from the conductor, who on those occasions was Martyn Brabbins, who has had quite a close association with Aho’s music. For whatever reason, he is not the conductor here, and that role is taken by the Estonian Olari Elts. He does a good job and secures confident performances. The sleevenote, in four languages is helpful. This is a SACD but I was listening in ordinary two channel stereo, in which the sound was immaculate. BIS has been supporting Aho for a long time and this latest issue is a worthy addition to their series. Aho’s fans need not hesitate, and those curious about trying this composer could well dip a toe in here.

-- MusicWeb International (Stephen Barber)