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.

This disc is very BIS. It brings together several extraordinary talents in a programme that skillfully links together the old and the new. The unifying factor is Kalevi Aho - the leading compoer of his generation in Finland. It features his third symphony - Sinfonia concertante for violin and orchestra. Jaakko Kuusisto, the leading Finnish violinist of his generation, is the soloist. The other work on this disc is Mussorgsky's song cycle 'Songs and Dances of Death' which Aho orchestrated for the great Finnish bass Martti Talvela. Here the soloist is the most fêted bass of his generation, Matti Salminen. To complete this glamorous package we have Osmo Vänskä conducting his Lahti Symphony Orchestra. The recordings were supervised by the celebrated BIS team of Robert Suff and Ingo Petry and took place in the stunning new all-wood concert hall in Lahti.

The first chapter in the BIS Sibelius Edition contained some of the Finnish master's most celebrated works, his Tone Poems. In the ten volumes that have been released after that, we have presented various less known aspects of Sibelius: the composer of chamber works and piano music, the miniaturist, even as the author of an opera. With the present instalment, the 12th and penultimate, we return to a genre for which he is particularly celebrated, namely the symphonic. The Seven Symphonies are undisputed treasures of 20th-century music which have fascinated great conductors and international audiences alike. They are here presented in performances by Osmo Vänskä, described in American Record Guide as 'the Sibelius interpreter de nos jours', and the eminent Lahti Symphony Orchestra, whose principal conductor he was for 20 years. The team's recordings of the symphony cycle has been described as 'towering head and shoulders over the competition' in the French magazine Répertoire, and on the website Classical Source as being 'almost universally recognised as the best of the digital age'. As these recordings now are given pride of place in the Sibelius Edition, they are complemented by alternative versions and fragments which provide a fascinating background to the final versions. The most substantial of these is the original version of Symphony No.5, available only in this recording, which upon its original release in 1996 not only received a Gramophone Award for its technical qualities but also was described by the same magazine's reviewer as 'one of the most important and above all interesting records to have appeared for many years.' Also unique for BIS are the recordings of the remaining supplementary material, made under the supervision of the violinist and conductor Jaakko Kuusisto and released here for the first time. Besides a number of short fragments which illustrate the decision-making process of the composer's creative mind in detail, it also includes preliminary versions of three complete movements: the scherzos from Symphonies Nos 1 and 4, and the second movement of Symphony No.3. In the accompanying booklet (numbering 128 pages), Sibelius expert Andrew Barnett guides us through this central chapter in Sibelius' oeuvre - an occasion not to be missed!

Armas Järnefelt (1869-1958) was a member of a family which made a profound mark on Finnish culture. One of his brothers was a painter, and another an author - and their sister Aino married Sibelius. For Armas, whose chosen field was music, the close proximity of Sibelius must have been quite overpowering - in old age he himself spoke of the stifling influence of Sibelius's unique genius. Maybe this is one reason why Järnefelt's most ambitious compositions were written in relatively close succession in the 1890s, just around the time when Sibelius had his first great break-through, and also why he soon changed direction and became a conductor first and foremost. Completed in the spring of 1893, Järnefelt's Serenade was composed in Paris, and the French influence - especially that of his teacher Massenet - can be clearly heard. Its six movements encompass a wide variety of moods, with many instrumental solos adding touches of colour, for instance in the emotionally charged Adagio for violin and strings. Two year's later, in the Symphonic Fantasy, composed after a momentous visit to Bayreuth, the influences are rather Wagnerian, and especially obvious in the central slow section with its clear reminiscences of Parsifal. The programme closes with Berceuse for violin and orchestra, which in 1904 marked the end of Järnefelt's most active period as a composer for orchestra. The piece is a beautifully atmospheric miniature which has found a place in concerts of lighter music all over the world. Conducting his compatriot's music - as well as performing the violin solos - is Jaakko Kuusisto, well-known to a wider audience for his recordings as a violinist of music by Sibelius, Rautavaara and Kalevi Aho. He stands in front of the Lahti Symphony Orchestra, whose performances of the music of Sibelius have earned them world-wide recognition.

John Corigliano's violin concerto 'The Red Violin' originated as the score to a film about a violin by one of the Old Italian master-builders, and its journeys around the world throughout three centuries. While working on the film score, Corigliano also produced a one-movement concert version of it, which he later expanded into a full-scale concerto in four movements. The son of a violinist, Corigliano's aim was to write a concerto in a style his father would have wanted to play, and he has managed to do so without sacrificing any of the music's communicative qualities, or its wealth of colours, emotions and atmospheres. The work is coupled here with a concerto of a similar broad appeal, composed by Jaakko Kuusisto, who is a highly respected violinist in his own right, as well as conductor. In his liner notes, Kuusisto recounts how he had toyed with the idea of writing a violin concerto for several years, but that the project only came into fruition after a commission from his colleague Elina Vähälä, and the liberating prospect of composing a work for another performer than himself. Appearing for the first time on BIS, the acclaimed violinist Elina Vähäla has a wide-ranging career, both geographically and in terms of repertoire. She made her début at the age of twelve, performing as a soloist with the Lahti Symphony Orchestra, which lends her spirited support on the present disc, and also performs the orchestral piece Leika. Using the Icelandic word for 'play' as its title, Kuusisto's composition displays a playfulness and wealth of colours that makes it a perfect curtain raiser for this appealing disc.

Internationally, Lahti Symphony Orchestra is closely associated with the numerous Sibelius recordings released on BIS, conducted by their long-time chief conductor Osmo Vänskä. These recordings have received an overwhelming international welcome among reviewers, but also among record-buyers: as of August 2009 more than one million Lahti discs released by BIS have been sold! As many already know, the orchestra does not only play works by Sibelius - its recordings of music by contemporary Finnish composers such as Rautavaara, Kalevi Aho and Joonas Kokkonen have all met with critical acclaim. Led by Jukka-Pekka Saraste, its present chief conductor, the orchestra now takes a step eastwards, and performs two symphonies by the Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov. Having as a student absorbed the music of Webern, Scriabin and the new Polish school, in the 1970s Silvestrov moved away from avant-garde techniques and became increasingly involved with the idiom of 19th-century song: 'It seems to me that music is song in spite of everything, even when it is unable to sing in a literal sense. Not a philosophy, not a system of beliefs, but the song of the world about itself, and at the same time a musical testament to existence.' To date, Silvestrov has composed seven symphonies, of which the Fourth (1976) and the Fifth (1980-82) are both dominated by a longing for a beauty that used to be, but is no longer within reach. Considered by some to be his masterpiece, Symphony No. 5 has for instance been described as 'an epilogue or coda inspired by the music of late Romantic composers such as Gustav Mahler.'

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.

The Unknown Sibelius presents a spectrum of the music that is the least wide-spread of the Finnish master’s production, either because the pieces included belong to genres not usually associated with ‘Sibelius the symphonist’, or because they appear in versions that differ from the ones that are performed frequently all over the world. A case in point is the opening Finland Awakes, a rarely heard version of what is possibly Sibelius’ best-known piece, Finlandia, in which the famous ‘hymn’ tune is restated in full, scored with unashamed flamboyance for brass, at the end of the piece. That recording and others on this disc are culled from the complete SIBELIUS EDITION brought to a close in 2011 – but completeness is a relative concept: a ‘complete’ edition is only complete until the next mislaid manuscript or forgotten work is re-discovered. The present disc thus serves a dual purpose, as it also includes première recordings of works and fragments that have been discovered or otherwise have become available after the EDITION was brought to a close. Among these, the late orchestral fragments earned a certain celebrity in October 2011, as media across the world greeted the discovery of what was soon proclaimed to be sketches for the famed 8th Symphony – that elusive Holy Grail of all Sibelius-spotters. Dr. Timo Virtanen, the respected authority on Sibelius, has prepared the sketches for the present recording and also written a text – available on the BIS web site – discussing them and the context in which they may have been written. If the orchestral fragments generally tend towards the harmonically bold sound world that Sibelius explored in some of his very late works, the three piano pieces that have also come to recent light are earlier works which all in different ways are connected to other compositions by Sibelius.

'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.

To many, the Lahti Symphony Orchestra has become synonymous with excellence in Sibelius repertoire. Its numerous recordings with the previous chief conductor Osmo Vänskä have received countless distinctions and awards, and the orchestra is universally regarded as having a very special affinity for the music of their great compatriot. On the present disc it is Okko Kamu, Vänskä's successor as chief conductor, who wields the baton. Kamu has been a presence on the international scene ever since the early 1970s, when he made a highly-acclaimed set of Sibelius symphonies in partnership with Herbert von Karajan. Here three other works by Sibelius make up the programme, which opens with music for Shakespeare's play The Tempest, for which the composer in 1925 wrote the most ambitious of his several theatre scores. For concert use he later selected the Overture and two Suites recorded here. In 1926, a year after The Tempest, Sibelius again turned to the realm of magic in his masterful evocation of the forest, the symphonic poem Tapiola. The title can be translated as 'the domain of Tapio', god of the forest in Finnish mythology, and according to Walter Damrosch, who conducted the first performance, the audience was 'enthralled by the dark pine forests and the shadowy gods and wood-nymphs who dwell therein'. From the start the work has been regarded as one of the greatest masterpieces from Sibelius' pen. These two large-scale works are here separated by the seven-minute long symphonic poem The Bard from 1913, a work which in its treatment of the thematic material and the chamber-music-like quality of its scoring invites comparison with the Fourth Symphony of two year's earlier.

Throughout his career, Sergei Prokofiev wrote a large number of works for the stage – some of them highly successful, others less so. Whichever the case, Prokofiev would rarely miss the opportunity of recycling the score in one way or another – staying more or less close to the original in an orchestral suite or using it as material for a completely new work, such as the Third and Fourth symphonies (based on the ballet The Prodigal Son and the opera The Fiery Angel, respectively.) The present release combines suites created from Prokofiev’s very first opera (The Gambler, 1915–17) and his very last ballet (The Stone Flower, 1948–53). Based on a short novel by Dostoyevsky, The Gambler doesn’t have separate numbers that can easily be detached. Instead Prokofiev created ‘portraits’ of the four main characters, by re-assembling the music associated with them throughout the opera. The plot of The Tale of the Stone Flower was based on a collection of folk and fairy tales from mining communities of the Ural Mountains, and Prokofiev composed a 150-minute score in an idiom relying on folk elements and nineteenth-century musical traditions. While waiting for official permission to have the ballet performed, he planned a number of orchestral suites. On this recording, the Lahti Symphony Orchestra and their principal conductor Dima Slobodeniouk splice together two of these compilations: the Wedding Suite, Op.126 and the Gypsy Fantasy, Op.127, both of which were performed before the ballet itself, in 1951. The result is preceded by the opening of the actual ballet, entitled The Mistress of the Copper Mountain. These suites frame the brief Autumnal Sketch, one of the composer’s earliest acknowledged works for orchestra.

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.’

The term sinfonietta is generally used to describe a work that is smaller in scale or lighter in approach than a standard symphony. It only came into common usage during the first half of the 20th century, which is when the three works included on this disc were in fact composed. Worth noting is also that Sergei Prokofiev and Benjamin Britten wrote their respective sinfoniettas while they were still in their teens – early attempts at multi-movement works for ensemble. Prokofiev revised his Sinfonietta twice, with the 1929 version recorded here, and went on to become one of the great symphonists of his time. Britten chose a different path, with operas forming the most important part of his legacy. Perhaps symptomatically, his Sinfonietta – his Op. 1 – was initially composed for wind quintet and string quintet, a scoring which he later expanded into the version heard on the present recording. Like Britten, Francis Poulenc was not naturally inclined towards large-scale orchestral works, and his Sinfonietta is indeed his only symphonic piece. The most recent of the works on the disc, it is in a neo-classical vein with sparkling dance rhythms as well as lyrical moments. The three works are here performed by the Lahti Symphony Orchestra conducted by Dima Slobodeniouk, a team which has released several highly acclaimed albums on BIS.

REVIEWS:

Poulenc's Sinfonietta would be the composer's only work in the symphony genre, borrowing, sometimes more obviously than not, from the neo-classical stylings of Stravinsky and nearly quoting Mozart. Poulenc mostly stayed away from larger forms, finding success with his songs, chamber music, and religious works, but this Sinfonietta displays the composer's charm and gift with melodic phrasing.

The Sinfonietta, Op. 5, by Prokofiev (heard here in its final revision from 1929, which the composer assigned as his Op. 48) is a youthful work, even in its revised form. A light and airy neo-classical work that, along with his Classical Symphony, can trace to the mature Prokofiev symphonic writing.

While the sinfoniettas of Poulenc and Prokofiev are light and airy works, the Sinfonietta, Op. 1, by Britten has a more mature sound, even though he was only 18 when it was written. The harmonic structure of the work is influenced by the Second Viennese School through his teacher and dedicatee of the work, Frank Bridge. Originally written for wind quintet and string quintet, Britten later revised it for chamber orchestra, which is what is presented here.

A thoroughly enjoyable hour of lighter music that will be nearly unknown to many listeners but should be accessible to a wide audience. BIS' engineers make good use of the Lahti Symphony's magnificent Sibelius Hall home.

-- AllMusic.com (Keith Finke)

All in all this is a splendid release, very enjoyable from beginning to end, offering 3 wonderful pieces not often encountered. It is expertly played, conducted and recorded. Very highly recommended.

-- Classical CD Review