KALEVI AHO

 

1. Kalevi AHO (b. 1949)

Symphony No.3 (Sinfonia concertante) for violin and orchestra

 

2. Modest MUSSORGSKY (1839-1881)

Songs and Dances of Death for bass and orchestra (orch. Aho)

 

1. Jaakko Kuusisto (violin); 2. Matti Salminen (bass)

 

Lahti Symphony Orchestra/ Osmo Vanska

 

The leading composer of his generation in Finland, Kalevi Aho combines a personal idiom with a great knowledge, appreciation and respect for the tradition of music.  Aho acknowledges an early debt to Shostakovich but soon developed a recognisable voice of his own.  BIS has already recorded six of Kalevi Aho's eleven symphonies.

 

This disc brings together several extraordinary talents in a programme that skilfully links together the old and the new. The programme features Aho’s third symphony - Sinfonia concertante for violin and orchestra with Jaakko Kuusisto, the leading Finnish violinist of his generation, as soloist. The work was originally conceived as a violin concerto but turned itself into what the composer describes as a ‘sinfonia concertante’.

 

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 feted bass of his generation, Matti Salminen.  Regarding his arrangement and orchestration of Mussorgsky's ‘Songs and Dances of Death’ Kalevi Aho speaks of a  ‘psychological instrumentation’, preserving the character of the original but giving it new nuances and emphasizing its conceptual dimensions in a manner that the piano version cannot achieve.

 

Aho has been composer in residence at the Lahti Symphony Orchestra since 1992.  To complete the glamorous line up of soloists, the release is further enriched by Osmo Vanska conducting his Lahti SO.  The recordings took place in the stunning new all-wood concert hall in Lahti.

 

BISCD1186