Outi Tarkiainen (b. 1985) has rapidly risen to the ranks of Finland’s internationally most successful composers. Born in Lapland, the landscape of this mystic Arctic region has proved a constant source of inspiration for her. This new album by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Nicholas Collon featuring Nicholas Daniel as soloist, includes some of the composer’s most recent orchestral works, including Midnight Sun Variations commissioned by the BBC Philharmonic and by the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Canada, and premiered at the BBC Proms in 2019. Outi Tarkiainen’s works are marked by strong atmosphere and rich orchestral textures.

This new album continues Ondine’s award-winning series of orchestral works by Witold Lutoslawski (1913–1994) together with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra. The series has gathered several accolades, including a Grammy nomination, a BBC Music Magazine Awards nomination, and several recording of the month awards and best recordings of the year nominations. This album includes the composer’s early hit, his folklorish masterpiece Concerto for Orchestra, which is among his most performed compositions.

This new album conducted by Nicholas Collon continues Ondine’s award-winning series of orchestral works by Witold Lutosławski (1913–1994) together with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra. The series has gathered several accolades, including a Grammy nomination, a BBC Music Magazine Awards nomination, as well as several recording of the month awards and best recordings of the year nominations. This album includes the composer’s early hit, his folklorish masterpiece Concerto for Orchestra, which is among his most performed compositions. The album also includes Partita for Violin and Orchestra (with Christian Tetzlaff as soloist), a virtuosic 5-movement work which in its orchestral version is not short of a Violin Concerto. The rarity in the album is Lutoslawski’s Novelette from 1979, which, although fragmentary, is already pointing toward the ideas of his 3rd Symphony.

The music of Grazyna Bacewicz (1909-1969) has been enjoying a revival during the past two decades. Bacewicz was an outstanding figure in 20th-century music, a major Polish composer and a versatile musician. This album by the award-winning pianist Peter Jablonski, pianist Elisabeth Brauß, the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and conductor Nicholas Collon includes some rarely recorded gems: the composer's Piano Concerto together with the late Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra in it's first digital recording. Also included is the composer's homage to Bartók, Music for Strings, Trumpets and Percussion, as well as the composer's early exuberant Overture written during the German occupation of Poland.

In the Autumn of 2021, the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra together with its new chief conductor, Nicholas Collon, arranged a Thomas Adès festival in Helsinki devoted to the world famous composer’s music in addition to works by other composers chosen and conducted by Thomas Adès (b. 1971). One of the highlights of the festival’s program was the world première of Märchentänze in its version for violin and orchestra performed by violinist Pekka Kuusisto, Adès’ long-time artistic partner. This new album by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra includes four recent and exciting orchestral works written by the composer between 2016 and 2021 in world première recordings.

Even though Magnus Lindberg's music is densely textured, highly varied, and unpredictable, and as complex, dissonant, and explosive as the wildest avant-garde music, it is often surprisingly pleasant, accessible, and exciting, particularly so in the kaleidoscopic and insanely colorful Clarinet Concerto (2002). This spectacular piece may serve as the best introduction to Lindberg's extremely virtuosic, multilayered music, especially because the focus on a single line instrument clarifies many of Lindberg's procedures and ideas – which can often seem buried in his thicker orchestral works – and highlights them in vivid relief against the elaborate and lush accompaniment.

Most recordings of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 1 in D major present it as it was published in 1899, in the definitive four-movement version. Yet an earlier state of the work was the 1888 tone poem Der Titan, which not only lent its title as an unofficial nickname for the work, but also contained the Blumine movement, which Mahler dropped from the final score. Curiously, many modern conductors have incorporated it back into the symphony as the second movement, even though its slow tempo and sentimental mood break the momentum and excitement created by the joyous first movement.

If you’re only interested in a single disc of Joonas Kokkonen’s music, then let this be the one. It contains three out-and-out masterpieces, stunningly played and recorded with even more vividness and immediacy than on the already superb BIS complete orchestral music edition. Kokkonen’s austere but deeply felt idiom, with its atmospheric tone colors and fleeting lyricism, follows logically on the Sibelius of the Fourth Symphony. This is particularly true of Kokkonen’s Third and Fourth Symphonies, which have much the same feeling of organic growth from just a few simple motives that so often characterizes Sibelius’ work.

Conductor Nicholas Collon began as the new Chief Conductor of the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra in September 2021. This all-Sibelius programme, carefully selected by the conductor, is his debut album together with his new orchestra. Collon offers fresh and modern interpretation of Sibelius’ symphonic testament, the 7th Symphony, and brings to life the colour and drama of Sibelius’ incidental music for two plays – Maeterlinck’s famous Pelléas et Mélisande and the historic King Christian II.

This CD features Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra with two major important works by Finnish composer Magnus Lindberg. The composer himself plays the solo part in the Piano Concerto (1990-94). The large-scale orchestral piece KRAFT (1983-85) features the Toimii Ensemble, in which Lindberg plays piano and percussion. This group was founded by Lindberg and Salonen in 1981 and has provided the composer with a laboratory for his sonic development. KRAFT meant for Lindberg the compositional breakthrough and earned him the UNESCO rostrum in 1986 and the Nordic Music Prize in 1988. Magnus Lindberg here performs on piano as a member of the Tomii Ensemble.

Jouni Kaipainen first came to notice in the early 1990s with the premieres of his First Symphony, two-piano concerto Ladders to Fire and the clarinet concerto Carpe diem!. His musical style, while recognisably built on late-20th-century aesthetics, is advanced but not aggressive, postmodern tonal with much that is jovial and pleasingly lyrical. This new disc makes a good introduction to his sound world.

Austrian composer Thomas Larcher (b. 1963) is one of the great symphonists of our era. This album by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and conductor Hannu Lintu includes the first recording of his 2nd Symphony, ‘Kenotaph’, and the song cycle ‘Die Nacht der Verlorenen’ performed by the world-known baritone Andrè Schuen.

Second volume in the Witold Lutoslawski (19131994) symphony cycle by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and its chief conductor Hannu Lintu brings together two symphonies which belong to the most remarkable symphonic creations of the late 20th century. In his 2nd and 3rd Symphonies Lutoslawski lays out the principal foundations of his creative legacy.