Fagerlund & Aho: Bassoon Concertos Bram van Sambeek

• 1 Bassoon Concerto, Mana 19:02
• 2 Woodlands 11:20
• 3 Solo V 10:13
• 4 Bassoon Concerto: I. Andante 11:20
• 5 Bassoon Concerto: II. Vivace 05:00
• 6 Bassoon Concerto: III. Passacaglia (Adagio) e Cadenza - 09:30
• 7 Bassoon Concerto: IV. Presto 08:30
• Total Runtime 01:14:55

Info for Fagerlund & Aho: Bassoon Concertos

The Finnish composer Kalevi Aho (b. 1949) and his younger colleague and compatriot Sebastian Fagerlund (b. 1972) have both received international recognition for their masterful treatment of large orchestral forces. This they have demonstrated in purely orchestral as well as in concertante works – Aho has written 26 concertos to date (most of them in his monumental project to compose a concerto for each of the main orchestral instruments), and Fagerlund’s concertos for clarinet and for violin have been released by BIS to critical acclaim. On this disc the two composers appear side by side with their respective concertos for bassoon and orchestra, works that to a certain extent illustrate different approaches to the concerto genre. If the Romantic concept of the concerto was that of a struggle between the soloist and orchestra, Fagerlund in his Mana (2014) instead gives the bassoon the role of a spiritual leader, conjuring up new sound worlds from the orchestra. (In Swedish – Fagerlund’s mother tongue – ‘mana’ is a verb that suggests invocation; in Finnish the word alludes to exorcism). Kalevi Aho, on the other hand, has endeavoured to enrich and expand the solo instrument’s sonic and expressive possibilities through his use of orchestration and describes his concerto as ‘quite symphonic in character’. Soloist in both works is Bram van Sambeek, the first bassoonist ever to receive the prestigious Dutch Music Prize and the musician for whom Fagerlund composed Mana as well as the solo piece Woodlands, written in preparation for the concerto. Kalevi Aho also contributes a substantial and dramatic solo piece, Solo V, which makes use of multiphonics as well as microintervals.

Bram van Sambeek, bassoon
Lahti Symphony Orchestra
Okko Kamu, conductor (track 1)
Dima Slobodeniouk, conductor (tracks 4-7)

Bram van Sambeek
is an international bassoonist and professor of bassoon at the Cologne University of Music. He is the only bassoonist to have received the most prestigious Dutch award in the field of classical music, the Dutch Music Prize. He is an alumnus of the Borletti-Buitoni Trust and of The Bowers Program of the Chamber Music Society of New York’s Lincoln Center. He played for ten years as principal bassoonist in the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and as a regular guest principal in the London Symphony Orchestra and Mahler Chamber Orchestra. As a soloist, he performs with orchestras such as the Gothenburg, Lahti and Netherlands Symphony Orchestras. A dedicated chamber musician, he made his recital début at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw in 2003 and is a regular guest at prestigious festivals. Bram van Sambeek is known for his extremely versatile approach to bassoon playing, and is invited by some of Europe’s foremost concert halls to programme adventurous concerts, for example combining bassoon concertos by Vivaldi with hard rock songs, or playing the audience to sleep and letting them spend the night in the concert hall. Previous releases on BIS include a disc with bassoon concertos by Kalevi Aho and Sebastian Fagerlund which won the prestigious BBC Music Magazine Award, and an album of rock covers with ORBI (The Oscillating Revenge of the Background Instruments) which reached number 1 in the iTunes Classic Charts.

Booklet for Fagerlund & Aho: Bassoon Concertos