Aho, Kalevi

Kalevi Aho’s guitar concerto (2018) is in seven movements performed without a break and each using the guitar in a different way. Duration ca. 30 minutes. Solo part 55011-710-5, 24,90 € Buy now

Kalevi Aho composed this piece for oboe in 2015 for the 60th anniversary of his brother Keijo Aho, who also premiered the work. The 10-minute work has five movements and is suitable also for advanced students. Each movement portrays a muse of the Greek mythology. 55011-493-7, € 13,90

Kalevi Aho composed ER-OS in 2015 as a wedding gift for conductor-clarinetist Osmo Vänskä and violinist Erin Keefe and named the work with the initials of their names. The virtuosic work is divided in three parts, the overall duration c. 11 minutes. 2 Playing scores: 55011-687-0, € 18,90

In spring 2020 the coronavirus began to spread throughout the world and in many places people were subjected to quarantine. It was then that the Japanese violist Hiyoli Togawa proposed to the record label BIS to release a viola disc entitled Songs of Solitude of short pieces by different contemporary composers as a reflection of…

Aho’s song cycle is set to poems of a Finnish modernist Tuomas Anhava (1927-2001). The composer tells: “I tried to create a work in which the words and the music were organically one. These autumnal poems immediately began to sound as music in my mind since they have a very beautiful musical ring and rhythm.”…

Scored for piano left hand and string quartet, Mysterium (2019) consists of four movements performed without a break. Inspired by the last, unfinished work, by Alexander Scriabin, Mysterium is a piano quintet dedicated to pianist Izumi Tateno. It is founded throughout on six-part Scriabin-like harmonies that also served as a basis for the melodic material….

A large-scale work in four movements lasting over half an hour, Kalevi Aho’s Sonata for violoncello and piano (2019) in four movements is furios, virtuosic and poweful, with a lyrical second movement. The third movement is a cello cadenza, provided in two versions: with and without throat singing. 55011-673-3, € 29,90

The Viola Concerto is part of an entire concert, which Kalevi Aho composed for the Chamber Orchestra of Lapland to be premiered in 2007. Concerto is in a single movement, but it nevertheless contains slower and faster episodes of varying or contrasting character. The piece also includes a demanding cadenza. Duration 24 min. Solo part…

The guitar miniature Törö (2007) is dedicated to the guitarist Petri Kumela. Törö is Finnish for Gudgeon (Gobio gobio), a species of fish living in fresh-water streams. It communicates with special creaks, also heard in the composition. 55011-351-0, € 11,90

This work is scored for a string orchestra of twenty players. The piano part is honouring the ‘Beethovenian-Lisztian-Brahmsian’ pianistic tradition. At times it is lean and linear, but the work also contains multi-layered, full-toned piano textures and massive rolling octaves. The 30-minute concerto requires great artistry on the part of the performer. It comprises 3…