Erkki-Sven Tüür
Symphony No. 5 for Big Band, Electric Guitar and Symphony Orchestra
Prophecy for Accordion and Orchestra
Nguyên Le, electric guitar
Mika Väyrynen, accordion
Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra
Olari Elts, conductor
Track listing
5 tracks · 59:19Listen to samples on selected tracks.
Erkki-Sven Tüür
- Symphony No. 5 for Big Band, Electric Guitar and Symphony Orchestra 38:49
- 1 I 8:33
- 2 II 12:52
- 3 III 5:26
- 4 IV 11:58
- 5 Prophecy for Accordion and Symphony Orchestra 20:30
About this recording
This exciting new release from Ondine includes two major works from one of the most interesting contemporary voices of today, Erkki-Sven Tüür (b. 1959). The album includes two works where the solo instrumentalist plays a significant role.
Symphony No. 5 is written for Big Band, Electric Guitar and Symphony Orchestra. In this recording the soloist is the world-known and award-winning French jazz guitarist Nguyên Lê. Accordionist Mika Väyrynen, a pioneer in contemporary accordion music, is the soloist in Prophecy for Accordion and Orchestra, a work which he also premiered.
Tüür's Symphony No. 5 mixes influences from various music genres in a fascinating way, it is also one of very few works where Western classical music is combined with elements from jazz and rock in a successful and profound way.
Prophecy is a concerto for accordion and orchestra with a deep mystic background, the title referring to the extremely long and rich practice of "seeing things" through the history of different cultures and traditions. The music reflects energetic leves of this phenomenom.
The new recording with the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra is conductor Olari Elts' debut recording on Ondine.
Features
Booklet with liner notes in English and Finnish.
Press
Big band, electric guitar and symphony orchestra. It's remarkable how successfully they're integrated by Estonian composer Erkki-Sven Tüür (...). The performance is admirably tight and well-coordinated.
Performance: **, Recording: ***
Terry Blain, BBC Music Magazine, April 2015
The sonic components meet on the level of elementalised sound-blocks and motivic shapes, go their seperate ways, clash and congeal, in ways that range from the fascinating to the downright spellbinding (...). This new disc, superbly performed, recorded and annotated as it is, will be self-recommending in any case.
David Fanning, Gramophone, January 2015
The artists
Nguyên Le
Guitarist Nguyên Lê, born in Paris to Vietnamese parents, embodies the exotic multi-cultural mosaic fueling the vibrant jazz and world music scenes flourishing in the French capital. A self-taught musician, majored in Philosophy & Visual Arts, Lê has developed a distinctive sound that draws upon rock, funk and jazz as well as traditional Algerian, Indian and Vietnamese styles.
Mika Väyrynen
A musician who can look back over hundreds of concerts in Finland, elsewhere in Europe and in Asia, Mika Väyrynen is one of the world's best-known and most highly-acclaimed accordionists. He began his concert career in the mid-1980s and has since been the soloist with almost all the professional Finnish orchestras, many European orchestras and at the music festivals the world over. As a chamber musician he has also appeared with numerous other world-class artists.
Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra
The Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, the first professional symphony orchestra to be founded in the Nordic countries (1882), has grown from a band of 36 players to an orchestra of 102 regular members.