SACDs - Aho

Kalevi Aho enjoys large-scale projects. One such project has been his ‘oboe project’, composing works in every genre for the instrument. The concerto is of particular interest being influenced by Arabic scales and Aho’s use of a fresh tonal approach.

BIS present two major works for horn, violin and piano, bringing together Johannes Brahms, generally regarded as the great traditionalist of the late 19th century, and György Ligeti, born 90 years after Brahms, and one of the most innovative and progressive figures of his time.

The death of Brahms’s mother had a great impact on his Trio, especially on the elegiac third movement.

Ligeti composed his trio to be performed during the celebrations of the 150th anniversary of Brahms’s birth.

The two trios frame a substantial, newly composed piece for horn solo written by Kalevi Aho with the present recording in mind.

Marie-Luise Neunecker is acclaimed as a chamber musician as well as soloist: György Ligeti wrote for her one of his last works, the Hamburg Concerto for solo horn and chamber orchestra. She is joined by Antje Weithaas and Silke Avenhaus, both appearing for the first time on the BIS label.

BIS releases the first recording on CD of Kalevi Aho’s Symphony No.12 - ‘Luosto’. It was 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 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.

BIS presents a disc of organ works from Finnish composer Kalevi Aho.

Aho is known principally for his large orchestral scores but he came to writing for organ via the orchestra by featuring it as the solo instrument in his Eighth Symphony.

The Finnish organist Jan Lehtola urged Aho to write the Symphony for Organ after playing the organ part for the Eighth. The subtitle Alles Vergängliche (‘All that is perishable’), comes from the end of Goethe’s Faust, and alludes to the symphony’s Faustian character

The Three Interludes depicts a mid-summer journey on the Arctic Ocean, when everything, in the absence of night, was ‘bathed in an endless blue-tinged light’.

The outstanding oboist Yeon-Hee Kwak pays tribute to three twentieth-century composers and gives the recording premiere of the orchestral version of the Concertino for Oboe and Orchestra by Nikos Skalkottas. The Inventions with a Postlude for Oboe and Cello by the Finnish composer Kalevi Aho form welcome encores.