Esa-Pekka Salonen - download (MP3 & FLAC)

Following its successful world première in 2006, Ondine is proud to present Kaija Saariaho’s La Passion de Simone, for soprano solo, choir, orchestra and electronics for the first time on SACD.

Kaija Saariaho considers La Passion de Simone - an oratorio about the life and thoughts of Simone Weil - to be her most important work. This SACD features world class performers including Dawn Upshaw and Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Tapiola Chamber Choir.

Dawn Upshaw has achieved worldwide acclaim for her wide-ranging operatic and concert repertoire. Kaija Saariaho wrote the soprano part in La Passion de Simone and the opera L’Amour de loin for her.

One of the most important artists in contemporary classical music, Esa-Pekka Salonen has become established both as a celebrated conductor and composer.

This release is also a tribute to Kaija Saariaho who turned 60 on 14th of October 2012.

As demonstrated by the four works on this disc, the music of Anders Hillborg couples complexity with directness, sensuality with humour, hypnotic meditation with pulsating rhythms, and all is combined with an original sense of form and unfaltering craftsmanship.

Hillborg recently became the first Swedish composer to have a work premièred by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra when Cold Heat was performed in January 2011.

Hillborg has called the symphony orchestra a ‘sound animal’. His love affair with the orchestra started in the 1980s, when he abandoned electronic music, and around the same time, Hillborg formed a bond with the conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, who here conducts Dreaming River from 1998 and Eleven Gates, a work he premièred with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2006.

Sakari Oramo and Alan Gilbert are both among the most highly regarded conductors of our time, and also have a special relationship with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra in common, as its current and former chief conductor. The Stockholm orchestra also commissioned both Dreaming River and Exquisite Corpse.

As a composer Arne Mellnäs (1933-2002) began to attract the attention of critics, audiences and other composers during the 1960s with music that embodied brilliance of technique as well as an inquisitiveness and playfulness of style. The three works recorded here embellish his style of composition and so much more.