A new cd containing Kalevi Aho's Piano Concerto No. 2 and Symphony No. 13 is now available

The Lahti Symphony Orchestra has released a new recording (BIS-CD-1316), which contains the Piano Concerto No. 2 and Symphony No. 13 by its composer-in-residence Kalevi Aho. The orchestra is conducted by Osmo Vänskä and the soloist is pianist Antti Siirala.

Kalevi Aho's Piano Concerto No. 2 was commissioned by the Mänttä Music Festival, and the first performance took place at the festival in June 2003. The soloist was Antti Siirala and the strings of the Lahti Symphony Orchestra were conducted by Osmo Vänskä. When composing the solo part, Aho tried to some extent to take Antti Siirala's personality as a performer into account. The demanding piano writing is primarily a consequence of Siirala's remarkable command of the 'Beethovenian-Lisztian-Brahmsian' pianistic tradition.

Aho's Symphony No. 13 'Symphonic Characterizations' was commissioned by the Sibelius Hall in Lahti for its fifth anniversary, and the composition exploited the acoustic capabilities of the hall to the full. Sometimes the trumpets and horns play from up in the hall's lighting gallery, from the echo chambers that surround the auditorium or from the stalls above the stage. Osmo Vänskä conducted the Lahti Symphony Orchestra in the work's first performance in March 2005.

Kalevi Aho (b. 1949) is one of Finland's foremost contemporaty composers. The central focus of his work consists of large-scale orchestral, chamber and vocal works: his output includes four operas, 15 symphonies, three chamber symphonies for string orchestra, 15 concertosother orchestral and vocal music and a large amount of music for chamber ensembles and solo instruments. He has also made a number of arrangements and orchestrations of works by other composers. Since 192 Aho has been composer-in-residence of the Lahti Symphony Orchestra.