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BIS 1886CD
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"Renowned for his rich production in the field of orchestral music, Kalevi Aho is also a prolific composer for chamber forces. Here are three works spanning two decades that have been combined with the 'Sonata For Two Accordions' originating in 1984 as a Sonata for solo accordion described by the composer in his own liner notes as 'comparable in aspiration with Liszt's most virtuosic piano works.' Completed five years later, the duo version exploits to the utmost the unique possibilities offered by the accordion and remains highly virtuosic. It was premiered as late as 2002 by Veli and Susanne Kujala, who also perform it on this recording. At the other end of the timeline is the 'Trio For Clarinet, Viola and Piano,' which was commissioned to be the set chamber music work of the 2006 Tampere Viola Competition. While the single-movement Trio reserves a prominent role for the viola, Aho describes it as 'a quite short and flamboyant work in which each instrument has something important to say.' Opening the disc is the large-scale 'Clarinet Quintet,' composed in 1998 as one in a series of quintets involving woodwind instruments, begun in 1973 with an Oboe Quintet and completed by the 2006 Wind Quintet."
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BIS 1316CD
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"With fifteen symphonies in his work list to date, as well as numerous other orchestral pieces, Kalevi Aho is one of today's most important composers of orchestral music. Twelve of the symphonies have already been released on BIS, in recordings that have earned an ever-growing interest. Back in 1999, the release of Symphony No.7 ('Insect Symphony') caused the reviewer in the American Record Guide to call the work 'one of our century's great orchestral scores.' More recent discs have met with similar acclaim, for instance in the International Record Review where Symphony No.12 ('Luosto') was described as 'music of such graphic impact and visually arresting imagery that it feels as though you could reach out and touch it.' On the German website klassik.com, the reviewer similarly praised Symphony No.14 ('Rituals') for demonstrating 'the vitality of a genre believed to be extinct, with its seemingly boundless wealth of ideas and perfect craftsmanship.' Symphony No.13 was written for the fifth anniversary of the Sibelius Hall in Lahti in 2003, and exploits the acoustic capabilities of the hall to the fullest. Subtitled 'Symphonic Characterizations,' the work portrays a spectrum of human character types in two long movements divided into a number of shorter sections. One year before the symphony, Kalevi Aho completed his Second Piano Concerto, for piano and string orchestra. It was written with the Finnish pianist Antti Siirala in mind, and in the composer's own words 'the demanding piano writing is primarily a consequence of Siirala's remarkable command of the 'Beethovenian-Lisztian-Brahmsian' pianistic tradition.' Siirala is the soloist on the present recording, supported by Lahti Symphony Orchestra and Osmo Vanska, the eminent team which also gave the first performances of these two works."
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BIS 1574CD
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"Two unusual solo instruments are the focus of this all-Aho disc. Indeed, in the case of the contrabassoon (or double bassoon), Kalevi Aho's work is one of the very few concertos that exists. It is also by far the most demanding and extensive. In fact, the solo part became playable only after recent developments of the instrument itself, extending its compass upwards. While composers have treated the tuba slightly more generously, there was certainly room for another concerto in the repertoire when Aho composed it in 2001. Both instruments are sometimes treated as the buffoons of the symphony orchestra, and are often called in by composers for comic effect. But Kalevi Aho underlines the great capacity of the two for cantabile singing, a quality that he has endeavored to bring out in their respective concertos. A recent release of Aho works was described in Gramophone as 'a superb coupling of two strongly communicative contemporary works.'"
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