Sibelius: Tapiola, En saga & Songs Anne Sofie von Otter, Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra & Hannu Lintu

• Jean Sibelius (1865 - 1957):
• 1 Tapiola, Op. 112 18:14
• 2 En saga, Op. 9 18:40
• 3 De bägge rosorna, Op. 88 No. 2 (Arr. A. Sallinen) 05:40
• 4 Sippan, Op. 88 No. 4 (Arr. A. Sallinen) 01:31
• 5 Dold förening, Op. 86 No. 3 (Arr. A. Sallinen) 01:05
• 6 Under strandens granar, Op. 13 No. 1 (Arr. A. Sallinen) 01:07
• 7 Kyssens hopp, Op. 13 No. 2 (Arr. A. Sallinen) 01:11
• 8 Hennes budskap, Op. 90 No. 2 (Arr. A. Sallinen) 02:35
• 9 Men min fågel märks dock icke, Op. 36 No. 2 (Arr. A. Sallinen) 02:14
• 10 Jägargossen, Op. 13 No. 7 (Arr. A. Sallinen) 02:41
• Total Runtime 54:58

Info for Sibelius: Tapiola, En saga & Songs

This new release by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Hannu Lintu is an all-Sibelius programme featuring internationally acclaimed mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter. The album includes two major tone poems by Jean Sibelius, Tapiola and En Saga, combined with a set of songs orchestrated by Aulis Sallinen (b. 1935) in 2015.Sibelius’s tone poem Tapiola, written shortly after the 7th Symphony, may be regarded as the culmination of a period that began with the Fifth Symphony, a period where Sibelius created music that grew organically out of tiny germs into huge processes. It was completed in 1926 and remained Sibelius’s last great orchestral work. In Tapiola, Sibelius appears to equate the primacy of nature with the value of art for its own sake, the unattainable truths of which remain uneroded by time or by the shifting ideals of mankind. Sibelius stated to his private secretary: 'My inspiration for Tapiola came wholly from nature, or even more accurately from something inexpressible in words'.The genesis of En Saga, originally premiered in 1892, is also shrouded in mystery, and even later in life Sibelius was reluctant to go into any detail regarding its content. It is among Sibelius’ earliest orchestral works, and its original title in Swedish, En saga, refers to ancient Nordic tales of heroes and gods. Although En saga is among the most popular works by Sibelius today, the premiere of the work was not a success and Sibelius revised the score in 1902.On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of Sibelius’s birth in 2015 composer Aulis Sallinen (b. 1935) orchestrated a cycle of songs for mezzosoprano Anne Sophie von Otter. This cycle of eight songs contains several less known songs in a cavalcade juxtaposing human emotions and innermost thoughts with the natural environment and experiences in nature.

Anne Sofie von Otter, mezzo-soprano
Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra
Hannu Lintu, conductor

Anne Sofie von Otter
Internationally acclaimed mezzo-soprano, Anne Sofie von Otter is one of the most successful singers of her generation with an extensive and varied discography representing her numerous and diverse operatic roles, her eclectic palette of recital programmes and her immeasurable oratorio and concert repertoire. She collaborated with pop icon Elvis Costello on the disc For the Stars and in October 2010 released her first recording with Naïve, Love Songs, a collaboration with legendary jazz pianist Brad Mehldau. Anne Sofie von Otter’s impressive recording catalogue has been acknowledged by numerous awards including a Grammy Award for Best Classical Vocal Performance for Mahler’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn, a Diapason d’Or for Watercolours – a recording of Swedish songs with her long-term accompanist, Bengt Forsberg – and in 2015 her double CD of French mélodies and chansons, Douce France received the Grammy Award for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album.

Anne Sofie von Otter gained an international reputation as an outstanding Octavian (Der Rosenkavalier) with performances at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Bayerische Staatsoper, Opéra national de Paris and Wiener Staatsoper. She also performed the role as part of a series of engagements with James Levine and the Metropolitan Opera; and a recording under Carlos Kleiber is available on DVD. Other seminal opera recordings include Le nozze di Figaro under Levine, Orfeo et Euridice and Alceste under Sir John Eliot Gardiner and Ariodante and Hercules under Marc Minkowski. Successfully sustaining her international reputation and profile, she remains in demand by the world’s leading conductors, orchestras and opera houses with recent highlights including Geneviève (Pelléas et Mélisande) under Philippe Jordan for Opéra national de Paris (available on DVD), Leonora in the world premiere of Thomas Adès’ The Exterminating Angel at the 2017 Salzburg Festival, and Waltraute (Götterdämmerung) at Wiener Staatsoper under Sir Simon Rattle. In 2011 she was honoured to appear with the Berliner Philharmoniker conducted by Claudio Abbado for a performance broadcast worldwide on TV of Das Lied von der Erde marking the one hundredth anniversary of Mahler’s death.

The Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra (FRSO)
is the orchestra of the Finnish Broadcasting Company (Yle). Its mission is to produce and promote Finnish musical culture. Its Chief Conductor as of autumn 2013 is Hannu Lintu, following a season (2012/2013) as the orchestra’s Principal Guest Conductor. The FRSO has two Honorary Conductors: Jukka-Pekka Saraste and Sakari Oramo. The Radio Orchestra of ten players founded in 1927 grew to symphony orchestra strength in the 1960s. Its previous Chief Conductors have been Toivo Haapanen, NilsEric Fougstedt, Paavo Berglund, Okko Kamu, Leif Segerstam, Jukka-Pekka Saraste and Sakari Oramo. The latest contemporary music is a major item in the repertoire of the FRSO, which each year premieres a number of Yle commissions. Another of the orchestra’s tasks is to record all Finnish orchestral music for the Yle archive. The FRSO has recorded works by Eötvös, Nielsen, Hakola, Lindberg, Saariaho, Sallinen, Kaipainen, Kokkonen, Ligeti, Messiaen, Berio, Lindberg, Sibelius and others, and the debut disc of the opera Aslak Hetta by Armas Launis (ODE 1050-2D). Its discs have reaped some major distinctions, such as the BBC Music Magazine Award and the Académie Charles Cros Award. The disc of the Sibelius and Lindberg Violin Concertos (Sony BMG) with Lisa Batiashvili as the soloist received the MIDEM Classical Award in 2008, in which year the New York Times chose the other Lindberg disc (ODE 1124-2) among its best Recordings of the Year

Hannu Lintu
Chief Conductor of the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra since August 2013, Hannu Lintu previously held the positions of Artistic Director and Chief Conductor of the Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra, Principal Guest Conductor with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra and Artistic Director of the Helsingborg Symphony and Turku Philharmonic orchestras.

Lintu’s most recent appearances include with the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Staatsorchester Stuttgart, RadioSymphonieorchester Wien, Luzerner Sinfonieorchester and Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia, and in North America with the St Louis Symphony and the Toronto Symphony, Baltimore Symphony and Detroit Symphony orchestras.

Recent engagements have included the The Cleveland and Gulbenkian orchestras, the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi, and the BBC Scottish Symphony, Iceland Symphony and Seoul Philharmonic orchestras. In 2015 he conducted a complete cycle of Sibelius’ symphonies in Tokyo with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and the New Japan Philharmonic, and toured Austria in January 2016 with violinist Leila Josefowicz and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra. Lintu returns to Savonlinna Opera Festival in 2017 to conduct Aulis Sallinen’s Kullervo, and in May 2017 he conducted Sibelius’ Kullervo in a special project with Finnish National Opera and Ballet with director and choreographer Tero Saarinen. Previous productions with Finnish National Opera have included Parsifal, Carmen, Sallinen’s King Lear, and Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde in spring 2016. Lintu has also worked with Tampere Opera and Estonian National Opera.

Hannu Lintu’s first recording of the Prokofiev Piano Concertos with Olli Mustonen and the Finnish RSO was released in September 2016, while other recent recordings for Ondine include Mahler’s Symphony No. 1, a selection of works by Magnus Lindberg, and Messiaen’s Turangalîla Symphony with Angela Hewitt and Valerie Hartmann-Claverie. Lintu has received several accolades for his recordings, including a 2011 Grammy nomination for Best Opera CD plus Gramophone Award nominations for his recordings of Enescu’s Symphony No. 2 with the Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra.

Booklet for Sibelius: Tapiola, En saga & Songs