Every five years the Soviet Union celebrated the anniversary of the October 1917 Revolution with large-scale public events, to which the country’s leading artists were expected to contribute. Mieczyslaw Weinberg, like his friend Shostakovich, enjoyed mixed fortunes with his efforts. The symphonic poem Dawn (Zarya), Op. 60, dedicated to the fortieth anniversary of the Revolution, seems to have remained unperformed during his lifetime, despite its ideologically irreproachable content. Its première was finally given in the BBC studios in Manchester, on 15 May 2019, by the BBC Philharmonic under John Storgards.

Per Nørgård has been hailed as the leading Danish contemporary composer and has often been described as eclectic. With this recording, the reasons for that will likely be evident both to listeners who are familiar with this celebrated composer and those who are new to his stylings. Nørgård has written in many genres – chamber music, concertos, operas, and orchestral music, including eight symphonies – and has drawn inspiration from a myriad of sources, such as the symphonies of Sibelius and Vagn Holmboe, jazz, artist Adolf Wölfli, and serialism, even taking the latter to a new level with his "infinity row," which, in turn, inspired numerous composers that followed.

To say the least, Kalevi Aho's Twelfth Symphony is unique in musical history. Like Wagner's Parsifal, it was written to be performed in a specific acoustic environment. But while Parsifal was composed for Wagner's six-year-old Festspielhaus in Bayreuth, Aho's Twelfth was composed for Finland's million-year-old Luosto Mountain in Lapland, hence the sobriquet Luosto Symphony. Commissioned by Soldankylä, the city at the base of the mountain, Aho wrote his Twelfth after carefully exploring the mountain slopes' acoustical properties and many of his artistic decisions were dictated by his findings. Given that vast stage, for example, the work would contain no fast sections requiring precision ensemble playing. And because it would be played outside, the possibility of an audible wind had to be taken into account.

Every five years the Soviet Union celebrated the anniversary of the October 1917 Revolution with large-scale public events, to which the country’s leading artists were expected to contribute. Mieczyslaw Weinberg, like his friend Shostakovich, enjoyed mixed fortunes with his efforts. The symphonic poem Dawn (Zarya), Op. 60, dedicated to the fortieth anniversary of the Revolution, seems to have remained unperformed during his lifetime, despite its ideologically irreproachable content. Its première was finally given in the BBC studios in Manchester, on 15 May 2019, by the BBC Philharmonic under John Storgårds. When Shostakovich died, on 9 August 1975, it had been five years since Weinberg composed his last symphony.

Kalevi Aho is one of those rare creatures, a living composer whose self-effacing nature - he looks endearingly owlish in all his publicity photographs - conceals a consistent and enchanting musical talent. After 40 years of large-scale works he has entered a much more intimate phase with Rituals, which consists of three separate pieces designed to be performed as a single concert. The work was premiered and recorded by Storgårds and the Lapland Chamber Orchestra in November 2007.

Influenced by the great classics of the 20th century as well as by other musical genres such as world music and rock, Sebastian Fagerlund's orchestral music, which has held a central position in his work, is known for it's pounding rhythmic energy and the quiet, gripping intensity of the more static passages. The flute concerto 'Terral' was written in close collaboration with Sharon Bezaly. Referring to a land breeze in Spain, 'Terral' is like a constant variation in a transparent and airy soundscape reminiscent of the soil taking on a new appearance when blown by the wind.

To date, Kalevi Aho has composed sixteen symphonies and twenty-eight concertos, several operas and a large number of chamber works – a rate of production which is all the more impressive considering the complexity and originality displayed by each new work. On this latest in a long series of BIS releases with Aho’s music, two of his most recent works are performed by the musicians of the Lapland Chamber Orchestra. The orchestra and its artistic director John Storgårds have collaborated with the composer on several projects, and the Concerto for Soprano Saxophone is a commission from the orchestra, at the suggestion of the Swedish saxophonist Anders Paulsson. A specialist on the soprano saxophone, Paulsson also demonstrated the instrument’s capabilities to Aho as part of his preparations.

Widely regarded as one of today's most important composers of orchestral music, Kalevi Aho has written fifteen symphonies to date, but also twenty concertos. Indeed, he himself describes his on-going series of concertos for each of the main instruments in the Romantic symphony orchestra as 'one of the most important and most ambitious of my composition projects'. One of the latest additions to this series is the Horn Concerto, composed for the Finnish horn-player Annu Salminen who also performs it on the present recording.

The BBC Philharmonic and it's new Chief Conductor, John Storgårds, follow their previous release of Shostakovich's Eleventh Symphony with this album of Symphonies Nos 12 and 15. Subtitled 'The Year 1917', the Twelfth Symphony was a project which Shostakovich had been planning and discussing for two decades - a symphony about Lenin. The first movement, 'Revolutionary Petrograd', depicts the arrival of Lenin in Petrograd in April 1917 and his meetings with the working people of the city. The second, 'Razliv', commemorates the site of Lenin's retreat to the north of the city. 'Aurora', the third movement, refers to the Russian battleship the revolutionary mutinous crew of which fired the first shot of the attack on the Winter Palace.

Tapiola Sinfonietta & John Storgårds - Fagerlund: Terral, Strings to the Bone, Chamber Symphony (2023)
WEB FLAC (tracks) - 268 Mb | MP3 CBR 320 kbps - 164 Mb | Digital booklet | 01:08:12
Classical | Label: BIS

Sebastian Fagerlund’s orchestral music, which has held a central position in his work, is known for its pounding rhythmic energy and the quiet, gripping intensity of the more static passages.

The playing by the Tapiola Sinfonietta, an outstanding ensemble by any standard, is excellent–not just technically, but emotionally. There’s real heart to the sound of the strings in the consoling final sonata, and the winds sing out their melodies with feeling.

The Dacapo label enters the graphic territory of its rival ECM here, with clean black-and-white graphics and sans serif fonts and equally crisp contemporary music that makes no concessions to popular taste but nevertheless offers a kind of accessibility. It is easy enough to imagine Schnee (snow in German – not Danish, interestingly) in composer Hans Abrahamsen's work, which fills the entire album. The music begins with an almost imperceptible high violin note as if to suggest sub-sensory beginnings of a period of snow. Abrahamsen has evinced a fascination with snow in other works, but it is perhaps reduced to its essence here.

On Remembering, the Danish cellist Jakob Kullberg continues his collaborations with two of the foremost Nordic composers: Per Nørgård and Kaija Saariaho. Praised internationally for his performances of the modern cello concerto, Kullberg regards the concerto form as the encounter of an individual soloist with the sound world of a composer. With living composers this approach often results in an unusual degree of collaboration, as the works gathered here bear witness to. Since 1999, Kullberg has enjoyed a close and unique partnership with Nørgård which has resulted in a large number of works.

Carl Nielsen and Jean Sibelius, alongside Grieg the two giants in Nordic classical music, were both born in 1865. Both also received their first musical training on the violin, earning valuable insights when it came to writing for the instrument. Their respective violin concertos were composed some six years apart – Sibelius’ in 1904-05 and Nielsen’s in 1911 – and belong to the most performed works of either composer. They are nevertheless as different from each other as are the artistic temperaments of their makers. While retaining the traditional three-movement concerto form, Sibelius composed something closer to a Late-Romantic orchestral tone poem giving the orchestra unusual prominence. Nielsen on the other hand opted for an unconventional form, reminiscent of the Baroque concerto grosso: the spiky, neoclassical work is nominally in two movements, but with each movement having a slow and a fast section.

Hans Abrahamsen’s feelings for snow are reflected in the titles of his works, for example in Winternacht, in the opera The Snow Queen and more straightforwardly in Schnee. In his music, the snow has many different states, and the colours are graduated with finely felt accuracy: snow white, cool blue white, blinding white, crystal clear.