Sibelius: Kullervo & Kortekangas: Migrations

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Osmo Vänska’s Sibelius has always been distinguished by detail, rhythmic precision and poetic luminosity…this new live recording is better throughout, gaining perhaps from more extrovert Minnesota... — BBC Music Magazine, July 2017, 4 out of 5 stars More…

Release Date: 3rd Mar 2017
Catalogue No: BIS9048
Label: BIS
Length: 1 hour 54 minutes

Usually despatched in 3 - 4 working days

Sibelius: Kullervo, Op. 7

Work length1:20:19

Album only

Lilli Paasikivi, Tommi Hakala, YL Male Voice Choir
Minnesota Orchestra
Osmo Vänskä
Recorded: 4-6 February 2016
Recording Venue: Orchestra Hall, Minneapolis, USA

I. Introduction

Track length12:54

$2.05

$3.85

$5.25

II. Kullervo's Youth

Track length19:38

Album only

$5.15

$7.00

III. Kullervo & His Sister

Track length26:09

Album only

IV. Kullervo Goes to Battle

Track length9:49

$1.50

$2.60

$3.50

V. Kullervo's Death

Track length11:49

$2.05

$3.85

$5.25

Kortekangas: Migrations

Work length29:25

$7.50

$9.10

$12.25

Lilli Paasikivi
YL Male Voice Choir, Minnesota Orchestra
Osmo Vänskä
Recorded: 4-6 February 2016
Recording Venue: Orchestra Hall, Minneapolis, USA

I. Two Worlds

Track length8:23

$1.50

$1.30

$1.75

II. First Interlude

Track length3:41

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

III. Resurrection

Track length2:57

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

IV. Second Interlude

Track length5:12

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

V. The Man Who Lived in a Tree

Track length3:25

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

VI. Third Interlude

Track length2:19

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

VII. Music That We Breathe

Track length3:28

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

Sibelius: Finlandia, Op. 26 (Version for Male Choir & Orchestra)

Work length4:37

$1.00

$2.60

$3.50

YL Male Voice Choir, Minnesota Orchestra
Osmo Vänskä
Recorded: 4-6 February 2016
Recording Venue: Orchestra Hall, Minneapolis, USA

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About

Some 150 years ago what is sometimes called ‘The Great Migration’ of Finns to the United States began. Many of the Finns settled in the Mid-West, and especially in the so-called ‘Finn Hook’, consisting of parts of Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin. To celebrate this, the Minnesota Orchestra under its Finnish music director Osmo Vänskä commissioned the composer Olli Kortekangas to compose a work on the theme of migration, of a scale and nature suitable for performance alongside Jean Sibelius’s great Kullervo. Discovering the work of the Minnesota-based poet Sheila Packa, herself of Finnish descent, Kortekangas composed Migrations for mezzo-soprano, male voice choir and orchestra, the same forces as in Kullervo, with the exception of the baritone soloist in that work.

An all-star Finnish cast – soloists Lilli Paasikivi and Tommi Hakala and the celebrated YL Male Voice Choir – joined the Minnesota Orchestra and Osmo Vänskä for three concerts in February 2016, and captured by a recording team from BIS the memorable performances can now be enjoyed by a wider audience. Sibelius began working on Kullervo during his student days in Vienna in 1891, finding his inspiration in the Kalevala, Finland’s national epic. In a letter home to Finland he wrote about ‘a new symphony, totally in the Finnish spirit’ and the work is often regarded as the first successful example of a Finnish national musical language.

In spite of what Sibelius wrote in his letter, the five-movement work is usually regarded as a symphonic poem, but with a duration of c. 80 minutes Kullervo certainly has the scale of a large symphony, and as such the present performance forms a worthy appendix to the highly acclaimed Sibelius cycle which the orchestra and Vänskä brought to a close with the recent release of Symphonies No 3, 6 and 7. As a fitting close to this two-disc set, and to the concerts in Minneapolis’ Orchestra Hall, the orchestra performs Sibelius’s Finlandia, with the YL Male Voice Choir joining in in the famous hymn section.

Reviews

July 2017

Osmo Vänska’s Sibelius has always been distinguished by detail, rhythmic precision and poetic luminosity…this new live recording is better throughout, gaining perhaps from more extrovert Minnesota playing, with the YL choir, excellent if slightly mature soloists and SACD sound

May 2017

The YL Male Voice Choir performs magnificently behind mezzo Lilli Paasikivi on the Kortekangas piece, and the integration of choral parts with orchestral interludes gives the piece an almost symphonic solidarity…A lovely tribute to a nation’s music as both heritage and living tradition.

6th March 2017

The finest recording of Kullervo that I’ve ever heard, presented in magnificent sound.

23rd February 2017

Vänskä now revisits Sibelius’s first exercise in large-scale symphonic form...Tempi are more or less the same as before, though perhaps instrumental detail is highlighted more obviously this time; whether that’s down to Vänskä’s conducting or to the balance of the recording is hard to say.

Sibelius: Kullervo & Kortekangas: Migrations

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