Anu Komsi, BBC Symphony Orchestra & Sakari Oramo
Biography Anu Komsi, BBC Symphony Orchestra & Sakari Oramo
Anu Komsi
is one of Finland's foremost international singers, a coloratura soprano with a strong reputation on the world's concert and opera scenes. She is praised for her perfect musicianship, technical skills, expressive interpretations and vast repertoire that ranges from renaissance music to the most advanced contemporary scores. By commissioning and premiering new works for her voice type, she has helped to widen and enlarge its repertoire for the last 30 years, whilst also singing bel canto and presenting forgotten coloratura masterworks for today's public. In 2020 she was awarded the Madetoja prize by Finnish composer's society and was also a nominee for the Nordic Council's Music Prize. In 2021, she received the prestigious Erik Bergman Prize for her special achievements in performing and commissioning new vocal repertoire internationally.
Following the BBC Proms 2026 in Bristol and György Kurtág‘s Kafka-Fragments op. 24 with Sakari Oramo, Anu Komsi will sing Kaija Saariaho‘s Mirage and Jean Sibelius‘ Luonnotar with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande (conductor: Eva Ollikainen) at the Victoria Hall Geneva. Further concerts of the season 2026/27 will include Saariaho’s Saarikoski Songs with the Colorado Springs Philharmonic (conductor: Chloe Dufresne) and songs by Heidi Sundblad-Halme with the Lahti Sinfonia (conductor: Sakari Oramo). She will also perform Alban Berg‘s Symphonic pieces from the opera Lulu with the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican Centre London and Lulu in Berg’s opera with the Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne at the Kölner Philharmonie - both with Sakari Oramo.
Anu Komsi made her debut as an opera singer in 1991 in Ligeti’s Aventures & Nouvelles Aventures at the Helsinki Festival, conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen. Internationally, she appeared at the Frankfurt Opera in 1993 as Olympia (Hoffmann’s Tales). Her 70 opera roles contain several critically acclaimed performances of Zerbinetta, Lulu, Gilda, Norina, Queen of the Night and Mother in Law in Kaija Saariaho's Innocence in 2017. She sang the huge coloratura role of Catherine in the Finnish premiere of Giacomo Meyerbeer’s l’Etoile du Nord. Recently, she also performed roles such as Salome, Nannetta, Susanna, Micaela, Rosalinde and Tiresias (Poulenc). In 2026, she successfully premiered the new opera Medusa by Iain Bell at La Monnaie/De Munt Brussels.
George Benjamin dedicated the soprano role in his opera Into the Little Hill especially to Anu. Since the premiere in Paris 2006, she has performed this work in Europe and the USA already 50 times, and most recently at the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg and Wigmore Hall London in 2019. Eva’s role in Karlheinz Stockhausen’s opera Donnerstag from Licht at the Theater Basel was another critically acclaimed performance. Anu is the only singer ever to have performed all of Eva’s massive role in this 6-hour opera where it is usually shared by different singers. She has appeared at the Semperoper Dresden, Stuttgart State Opera, Berliner Festspiele, Salzburg Festival, Wiener Festwochen, Lucerne Festival, Opéra National de Paris, Opéra National de Lyon, Teatro La Scala Milan, Finnish National Opera and Lincoln Center Festival NYC i. a.. She premiered large works including Kaija Saariaho’s Saarikoski (2013-2020) and Leino Songs (2000-2007), Jonathan Harvey’s White as Jasmine (2000), Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Floof (1988) and Wing on Wing (2004) and Unsuk Chin’s Cantatrix Sopranica (2005).
Anu Komsi has performed with the Vienna and Berlin Philharmonic, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Gewandhausorchester, the Gürzenich Orchestra, La Scala Orchestra Milan, the Accademia di Santa Cecilia Rome, the New York Philharmonic, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the LA Philharmonic, the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the Philharmonia Orchestra London, the Czech Philharmonic, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, the Rotterdam Philharmonic, the Helsinki Philharmonic, the Oslo Philharmonic, the Ensemble Intercontemporain Paris, the Gulbenkian Orchestra Lisbon i.a.
Sakari Oramo
A guest conductor at the highest international level and a prolific recording artist, Sakari Oramo’s performances combine crystalline structural cohesion with authority, elegance and passion.
Now in his 12th season as Chief Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Sakari Oramo continues to captivate audiences in a season of intelligently and innovatively programmed concerts which highlight lesser-known compositional voices, as well as showcasing classic masterpieces. Mahler’s Symphony No.9 opens a season which also includes works by Thomas Adès, Mozart, Cecilia Damström, Beethoven, Lindberg, Stravinsky, Korngold and Bartók. Oramo returns to Gürzenich-Orchester Köln as their Artistic Partner for concerts of Strauss, Adès and Sibelius. Other guest engagements include returns to Dresden Philharmonic, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, and NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester.
Notable engagements from previous seasons include those with Berlin Philharmonic, Finnish Radio Symphony, Wiener Symphoniker, Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, Staatskapelle Dresden, Boston Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic and Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia.
Throughout his career, Oramo has held numerous prestigious positions; Music Director of City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra from 1998 – 2008, Chief Conductor of Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra from 2003-12, Principal Conductor of West Coast Kokkola Opera from 2004 – 18, Chief Conductor of Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra from 2008 – 2021, and Artistic Director of Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra from 2013 – 19. An accomplished violinist, Oramo was originally concertmaster of Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra.
Oramo continues to champion new and rarely performed works with BBC Symphony Orchestra, and has given dozens of world, UK, and Finnish premieres, and worked with many of the most outstanding composers of our time. Oramo is a regular conductor at the BBC Proms – during the summer of 2025, he presented several Proms with BBC Symphony Orchestra including The First Night of the Proms, performing Sibelius’ Violin concerto with Lisa Batiashvili and crowning the evening with Vaughan Williams’ little known oratorio Sancta civitas.
In 2025, Chandos released the second volume of Oramo and the BBC Symphony’s exploration of the works of Grażyna Bacewicz, following an acclaimed reading of Symphonies No.3 and 4 in 2023. Other entries in Oramo’s extensive discography include recordings of Dora Pejačević’s Piano Concerto and Symphony in F‑sharp minor with BBC Symphony Orchestra, works by Ravel with Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, and Rued Langgaard’s Symphony No.1 with Berliner Philharmoniker. He has also recorded Sibelius’s complete symphonies with City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Nielsen’s and Schumann’s complete symphonies with Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, and many works by Kaija Saariaho and Magnus Lindberg with various orchestras. Successes across his catalogue include BBC Music Magazine’s Orchestra Award for Nielsen: Symphonies Nos.1 and 3 with Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, a Gramophone Award in 2019 for Laangaard: Symphonies No. 2 and 6 with Wiener Philharmoniker and soprano Anu Komsi, and a 2020 International Classical Music Award for Busoni’s Piano Concerto with Boston Symphony Orchestra and Kirill Gerstein.
