A companion to Jan Lehtola’s recording of Kalevi Aho’s (b. 1949) monumental organ symphony ‘Alles Vergängliche’, this present disc includes five smaller Aho pieces for organ solo, as well as three compositions for organ and other instruments. + Mr. Lehtola has appeared with the leading Finnish orchestras, performed at international festivals and given recitals in leading European churches and concert halls. + He has had works written for him by several composers, including Kalevi Aho.

For those who have followed the career of Kalevi Aho (for instance through the more than 20 discs of his music released on BIS), it will be clear that he enjoys large-scale projects. One such project has been his 'oboe project', composing works in every genre for the instrument. These plans can be said to have begun soon after the Sonata for oboe and piano included here, composed in 1984-85 and thus possibly the first such work for this combination by a Finnish composer. The project received fresh impetus in 2002, when Aho encountered the eminent Belgian oboist Piet Van Bockstal. As a result he composed his Oboe Concerto, premièred by Bockstal in 2008, a work in which Aho wanted to explore fresh directions for tonality as well as creating orchestral music with a more powerful rhythmic pulse and a richer sound-world. As a result the Concerto employs scales from Arabic classical music as a melodic basis in some of its five movements, and also features the Arabic darabuka and African djembe (two types of goblet drum). Although there is no oboe included in the orchestral score, Aho also specifies the use of two of its rarely heard relatives: the oboe d'amore and the heckelphone (a baritone oboe). Three years after the Concerto, the composer returned to his oboe project, and completed it by writing a solo piece for the instrument. Dedicated to Piet Van Bockstal, the 10-minute Solo IX also forms part of another of Aho's projects - a series of large-scale, virtuosic solo works for various instruments. Together with a number of chamber works for different constellations, this disc sums up Kalevi Aho's oboe project, in expert performances by Piet Van Bockstal, supported by the pianist Yutaka Oya, and by Martyn Brabbins conducting the Lahti Symphony Orchestra, for which Aho has composed so much of his music.

With 17 symphonies and 32 concertos to date, Kalevi Aho is one of today’s most prolific composers of large-scale orchestral scores. The present release brings together two works separated by 35 years, but also by the reception they have enjoyed: whereas Sieidi, the percussion concerto Aho composed in 2010, has become one of his most performed works, Symphony No. 5 from the mid-70s is a rarely heard score. Sieidi was written for Colin Currie, who has recorded it here and who performs the concerto with orchestras across the world. Its title, a word in Sami, is used in reference to the rituals and shamanism of indigenous peoples around the world, and the solo part, which makes use of nine different percussion instruments, begins and ends with the djembe and darbuka, drums usually heard in African and Arab music. The instruments are placed in a row towards the front of the stage, and during the course of the work the soloist makes his way across the platform, from the right to the left and back, reinforcing the ritualistic dimension of the piece. Currie is supported by the Lahti Symphony Orchestra under its principal conductor Dima Slobodeniouk, a team with a deep familiarity with Aho’s music. This stands them in good stead when they take on the highly complicated score of Symphony No. 5, which in places even calls for a second conductor: wishing to express the incoherence of human existence, the composer lets various, often unrelated musical events overlap, at times dividing the orchestra into two parts playing at different speeds. Composing the work was ‘an exceptional effort’ according to Aho, who adds that it left him ‘with the liberating feeling that everything was now possible – that any musical problem or crisis could be overcome.’

Kalevi Aho needs little introduction to people familiar with the BIS label. He is, quite simply, the foremost Finnish composer of his generation as well as the most prolific. This is the ninth disc devoted exclusively to his music and he has contributed single works to numerous other CDs. Aho is unique among contemporary composers in his concern for the music of his immediate forebears and the first half of this disc consists of his homage to the composer Uno Klami (1900-1961). Klami's greatest work, the ballet score 'Whirls' (CD656), was unfinished when the composer died. He was intending to write the definitive Finish ballet based, as one would expect, on stories from Kalevala, the great poem of Finnish mythology that has inspired so much art in Finland. Kalevi Aho undertook to write the missing third act of this ballet so that the ballet could be performed in full and this was the origin of the 'Symphonic Dances' presented here. The second half of the disc comprises Aho's eleventh symphony. Several of Aho's previous symphonies have included a major part for a solo instrument. Here the 'solo' instrument consists of a huge battery of instruments performed by the six members of the Kroumata Percussion Ensemble! Once again Kalevi Aho displays his ability to get under the skin of an instrument and to communicate his insights in a musical language that is readily accessible.

Continuing a commitment which began in 1989, BIS has released a number of discs dedicated to the Finnish composer Kalevi Aho. These includes programmes with chamber music, but the majority involve large orchestra, performing large orchestral works. One genre favoured by Aho is that of the concerto, and the recently released recording of his Clarinet Concerto made a great impact on reviewers around the world, who described it as 'intensely lyrical, thematically memorable, and beautifully scored' (ClassicsToday.com), 'a deeply moving master-piece' (Fono Forum), and 'a chef-d'oeuvre of our time!' (Classica-Répertoire). This prolific composer is also one of today's great symphonic writers: his current work list includes no less than fourteen symphonies, and nine of these have been released on BIS, to great acclaim - upon its release in 1999, No.7 was for instance greeted as 'one of our century's great orchestral scores' by the reviewer in American Record Guide. But even within such an extraordinary body of works, Kalevi Aho's 'Symphony No.12, Luosto',holds a very special place. Written for a performance on the slopes of Mount Luosto in Finnish Lapland, it makes use of two orchestras, two vocal soloists and a number of brass players and percussionists placed at various distances from each other and the conductor, surrounding the audience. The primary inspiration for this four-movement work came from the natural surroundings and traditions of Lapland, and parts of it were actually composed during a bitterly cold spell in the solitude of a cottage at the foot of Orresokka, the mountain next to Luosto. The three-dimensional qualities written into the score makes it the perfect subject for a Surround Sound recording, and during the recording sessions in the acclaimed acoustics of the Lahti Sibelius Hall, great pains were taken to recreate the set-up of the first performance. This took place in 2003, in front of - or rather around - an audience of over 2000 people, and became the starting point of 'LuostoClassic', an annual summer music festival which in 2008 features another performance of Aho's symphony. Among the performers on the present recording, the vocal soloists, the Chamber Orchestra of Lapland and the conductor John Storgårds all took part in the première of the work. The uniqueness of the work, in terms of both sonic qualities and conception, would render any additional work meaningless in the context of a single disc, which is why it is published on its own despite the playing time of just under 50 minutes.

'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. Mentioning Indian ragas, Japanese shakuhachi music, Arabian rhythms and Eastern scales, Aho explains that his aim has been to expand his own sound world with elements of other classical music cultures, and to try to view the Western musical tradition from other perspectives. Minea and Symphony No.15 frame the composer's Concerto for Double Bass, composed in 2005 for Eero Munter. In order to be able to write idiomatically for the instrument, the composer borrowed a double bass, and as work on the piece progressed, he actually grew proficient enough to try out most of the solo part - albeit at a very slow tempo, as he freely admits! The concerto offers the opportunity to hear the solo instrument in highly unusual contexts, for instance in the two accompanied cadenzas - the first a pizzicato duet with the harp, and the second a trio with two percussionists. Throughout the disc we hear the Lahti Symphony Orchestra, which for more than 20 years has made a remarkable commitment to the composer, performing and recording a large number of his works. The orchestra is conducted by Jaakko Kuusisto and Dima Slobodeniouk, as well as by the above-mentioned Osmo Vänskä.

Known particularly for his orchestral output – 16 symphonies and 21 concertos to date! – the Finnish composer Kalevi Aho was recently described in Gramophone as having ‘a strong claim to the title of greatest living symphonist’. But as followers of the ongoing releases of his music on BIS will know, Aho has also composed a large number of works for smaller forces – quartets and quintets, duos and solo pieces. On the present disc, the Finnish pianist Sonja Fräki presents his output for solo piano, comfortably fitting on one disc, but nevertheless spanning some 30 years of a long career. The disc in fact opens with Aho’s earliest published work, the Nineteen Preludes from 1965-68, written before the composer had begun any formal studies of either composition or the piaNo.There is even a first version of Prelude No.8 dating from 1963, when Kalevi Aho was in his early teens and was just beginning to teach himself the piano, writing music intended mainly as practice pieces for his own use. Since then Aho has composed for other budding pianists – the Two Easy Piano Pieces for Children and the Sonatina – but as in much of his other music, the works for piano display his characteristic fascination with the virtuosic and technically brilliant side of music-making. On the present disc, this quality comes to the fore in the Sonata, with its sparkling first movement and percussive, toccata-like second movement followed by a searching Tranquillo molto, characterized by a trill which continues almost without interruption throughout the movement. Commissioned as a set piece for a piano competition, Solo II is likewise a challenge for any pianist, and forms part of a series of big (roughly ten-minute) solo works for various instruments, of which several have been recorded by BIS.

The experience of Gregor Aichinger (Regensburg, 1564/65 – Augsburg, 20/21 January 1628) in Italy, which took place during two distinct periods, made it possible for the Bavarian musician to be an important connection between the music that was practiced at that time in Italy and the musical culture on the other side of the Alps (Aichinger was one of the very first German musicians to publish compositions with basso continuo, a practice with which he had become acquainted precisely during his visits to Italy). The Virginalia consist of twenty five-part pieces. The introductory one, Virgo, Dei mater pura, is followed by the pieces of the Joyful Mysteries (from the second to the sixth), then – from the seventh to the eleventh – by those of the Sorrowful Mysteries, and subsequently – from the twelfth to the sixteenth – by those of the Glorious Mysteries. In the last four pieces there is a contemplation of the Virgin Mary, by now projected in a light and a dimension that are beyond the world, as the mediator between mankind and God. The collection dedicated to Maria is performed by the Ensemble Concentus Vocum directed by Michelangelo Gabbrielli, already protagonist in some important world premiere recording of the Armonia Ecclesiastica 1653 by Sisto Reina [TC621801].