This album is in many ways a celebration of collaboration. All the concertos on the recording have been composed for Petri Kumela and he has already worked together a lot with each composer. Kumela has been actively involved in the composition processes of all concerts. Tapiola Sinfonietta and Dima Slobodeniouk are also familiar partners of Kumela.

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.

The focus of Kalevi Aho’s output lies on large-scale orchestral works, and his work-list includes fifteen symphonies to date, composed between 1969 and 2010. Although the Finnish composer is famously lavish as an orchestrator, and often invites rare guests such as the heckelphone into his orchestra, the scores of Aho’s three chamber symphonies are much more economic in scale. But although composed for some twenty strings in all, and of more modest durations than for instance the 50-minute Eighth Symphony for organ and orchestra, they bear eloquent proof of the composer’s aim of exploiting to the full the expressive capabilities of a string orchestra.

The Second Concerto proves an expressive and undeservedly neglected gem in Kantorow's hands.

Outstanding ensemble playing, carefully judged phrasing and dynamic tension, and ravishing solo work.

This new release features the first-ever commercial recording of three newly discovered viola concertos by German-born Swedish composer Joseph Martin Kraus. Joseph Martin Kraus was one of the most innovative composers of his time. With Mozart, he was described by Haydn as one of only two geniuses he knew. Recipient of the 2011 Leonard Bernstein Award and of the 2010 Avery Fisher Career Grant, David Aaron Carpenter has emerged as one of the world's most promising young artists. The Philadelphia Inquirer describes him as being “in a league with the best.”

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.

Stemming from the same fertile compositional period as the majority of his clarinet works, composer Carl Maria von Weber was also hard at work penning two symphonies (in fact, his only two forays into this genre) and his lone Concerto for bassoon and orchestra. Though written only a few short years after Beethoven's revolutionary Third Symphony, Weber seems little interested in innovation apart from his use of scherzos in place of minuets.

Mozart?s concerto actually began life as a concerto for basset horn (not basset clarinet) and was written in the key of G. The manuscript ended abruptly after the 191st measure of the first movement. Mozart rethought his plan, decided to recast the concerto in A, and overhauled the solo part for basset clarinet, an instrument developed by his friend Anton Stadler The version that entered the repertoire after Mozart?s death was an adaptation of the original.

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.

In 2019, Alexandre and Jean-Jacques Kantorow’s recording of the last three piano concertos by Camille Saint-Saëns earned the highest praise around the world, including a Diapason d’or de l’année, Editor’s Choice in Gramophone and top marks and recommendations from the leading German web sites Klassik Heute and Klassik.com. The Kantorows’ orchestra of choice was the Finnish ensemble Tapiola Sinfonietta, and they have now returned to Helsinki to record not only Saint-Saëns’ first two concertos, but all of the remaining works for piano and orchestra.

Anton Bruckner's early symphonies are not as widely performed or recorded as his mature works, so Mario Venzago's double-disc on CPO of the Symphony in D minor, called "No. 0" or "Die Nullte," and the Symphony No. 1 in C minor is a stand-out from the nearly unstoppable run of recordings of the Fourth, Seventh, and Ninth. Venzago and the Tapiola Sinfonietta give exceptional performances that have technical polish and expressive warmth, and the charm the musicians draw out of these pieces makes one wonder why they aren't more popular. Certainly, both symphonies approach the later ones in expansiveness and seriousness, and there's more than a little Brucknerian sonic grandeur in these fledgling efforts. Yet even though these are works of the late 1860s, the music is still strongly governed by Classical models, and because the influence of Richard Wagner is absent in the symphonies prior to the Third, listeners who ordinarily find Bruckner too complicated, heavy, and ponderous may find these lighter works more accessible and enjoyable.

With his sweet, subtly varied tone, lightly brushed bowing and imaginative phrasing, Kuusisto is vividly reponsive to the dancing playfulness of the Allegros and that uniquely Mozartian mixture of innocence and sensuous yearning in the slow movements. Tempi are fleet and buoyant yet never driven. (…) These performances, zestfully accompanied and warmly recorded, capture the poetry, excitement and coltish energy of these miraculous fruits of Mozart's teen years.