Lieberson: Songs of Love and Sorrow & The Six Realms The Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra & Hannu Lintu

• Peter Lieberson (1946 - 2011): The Six Realms:
• 1The Six Realms: I. The Sorrow of the World03:40
• 2The Six Realms: II. The Hell Realm04:00
• 3The Six Realms: III. The Hungry Ghost Realm04:52
• 4The Six Realms: IV. The Animal Realm02:54
• 5The Six Realms: V. The Human Realm02:37
• 6The Six Realms: VI. The God Realm and the Jealous God Realm04:42
• Songs of Love and Sorrow:
• 7Songs of Love and Sorrow: No. 1, Sonnet XLVI (Live)06:03
• 8Songs of Love and Sorrow: No. 2, Sonnet XII (Live)04:27
• 9Songs of Love and Sorrow: No. 3, Sonnet LII (Live)04:46
• 10Songs of Love and Sorrow: No. 4, Sonnet LXIX (Live)04:11
• 11Songs of Love and Sorrow: No. 5, Sonnet LXXXII (Live)06:32
• Total Runtime48:44

Info for Lieberson: Songs of Love and Sorrow & The Six Realms

This new album by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and its chief conductor Hannu Lintu is dedicated to works by American composer Peter Lieberson (1946–2011). This album features award-winning bass-baritone Gerald Finley as soloist in Lieberson’s song cycle Songs of Love and Sorrow and Lieberson’s close friend Anssi Karttunen as soloist in The Six Realms for cello and orchestra.

Lieberson’s Songs of Love and Sorrow is a deeply personal work. Lieberson had received a commission in 2005 to write a work for his wife, mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson. This project was interrupted by Lorraine’s death and soon after also the composer was diagnosed with cancer. The news of being awarded the Grawemeyer Award for his earlier song cycle Neruda Songs (2005) encouraged the composer to write another cycle on Neruda’s poetry, Songs of Love and Sorrow. The work was premiered by Gerald Finley in 2010. The composer wrote in his program notes: “I suppose that my life story of the past three years is not dissimilar to many others. The basic truths of love and sorrow are, I think, experiences that all of us understand very well. To have one without the other is not likely, but certainly it is our capacity to love that makes this human life so poignant.”

Buddhist religion had played a significant role in Lieberson’s life since the early 1970s. This also had an impact on Lieberson’s compositions. According to Lieberson, “When I started writing music again, my style had changed... There was less sense of struggle... the horizon expanded. It’s as if you had tunnel vision, and then you have panoramic vision. Studying Buddhism also affected my approach to composing [in that] I understand there’s a kind of journey that’s made.” Lieberson directed a Buddhist training center for years before devoting his time exclusively to composition since 1994. At the request of Yo-Yo Ma, Lieberson conceived a concerto for amplified cello and orchestra, entitled The Six Realms, that outlines a key Buddhist teaching: that differing states of mind and emotions color our view of the world and shape human experience. This philosophy is reflected in the piece’s formal structure; each of the concerto’s six continuous sections represents a different state of being.

Gerald Finley, bass-baritone
Anssi Karttunen, cello
Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra
Hannu Lintu, conductor

Hannu Lintu
With a “scrupulous ear for instrumental color and blend” (Washington Post) and bringing “a distinctive dynamism to the podium” (Baltimore Sun), the 2018/19 season marks Hannu Lintu’s sixth year as Chief Conductor of the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra. Highlights include all ten Mahler symphonies – Lintu opens the cycle at the Helsinki Festival in August 2018 with No.8 “Symphony of a Thousand” – Finnish premieres such as the vocal symphony version of Zimmermann’s opera Die Soldaten and Thomas Larcher’s Symphony No.2, and concerto performances by acclaimed soloists including Yuja Wang, Evgeny Kissin and Stephen Hough. In March 2018 the Orchestra toured Spain and Germany with cellist Sol Gabetta to great acclaim – venues included Madrid’s Auditorio Nacional de Música, the Berlin Philharmonie and Kölner Philharmonie – and on Independence Day (6 December 2017) a special concert featuring world premieres by esteemed national composers Magnus Lindberg and Lotta Wennäkoski was held to celebrate 100 years of Finnish autonomy as well as the Orchestra’s 90th anniversary.

Guest highlights of the 2018/19 season include returns to the Baltimore, St Louis and Cincinnati symphony orchestras, the New Japan Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Singapore Symphony Orchestra and NDR Elbphilharmonie (following highly successful debuts in 2017); Lintu also makes his debut with the Boston Symphony and Hungarian National Philharmonic orchestras. Other recent engagements include the Tokyo Metropolitan, Washington’s National, Dallas and Detroit symphony orchestras, NAC Orchestra, Ottawa, and his debut with the Orchestre de Paris.

A regular in the pit, Lintu works frequently with the Finnish National Opera and Ballet, returning in March 2019 to conduct Berg’s Wozzeck. In 2017 he received rave reviews for Kullervo, a special collaborative project with director/choreographer Tero Saarinen honouring 100 years of Finnish independence and on which Opera Magazine commented: “No other conductor – including several distinguished Sibelians – I have heard in this music has been quite so willing to show what makes [Kullervo] so original”. Other previous Finnish National Opera productions include Parsifal, Carmen, Sallinen’s King Lear and Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. In July 2017, as part of Finland’s centenary celebrations, Lintu conducted Sallinen’s Kullervo at the Savonlinna Opera Festival, returning in 2018 for four performances of Verdi’s Otello.

Hannu Lintu has made several recordings for Ondine, BIS, Naxos, Avie and Hyperion; recent releases include Bartók’s Violin Concertos (with Christian Tetzlaff – Gramophone magazine’s “Recording of the Month” in May 2018), Fagerlund’s Stonework (with Ismo Eskelinen) and the final instalment of Prokofiev’s complete Piano Concertos (Nos.2 and 5, with Olli Mustonen), all of which feature Lintu’s principal recording partner, the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra. Lintu has received several accolades for his recordings, including a 2018 ICMA Award for works by Sibelius featuring Anne Sofie von Otter, a 2011 Grammy nomination for Best Opera CD (Rautavaara’s Kaivos), and Gramophone Award nominations for his recordings of Enescu’s Symphony No.2 with the Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra and the Violin Concertos of Sibelius and Thomas Adès with Augustin Hadelich and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.

Hannu Lintu studied cello and piano at the Sibelius Academy, where he later studied conducting with Jorma Panula. He participated in masterclasses with Myung-Whun Chung at the L'Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, Italy, and took first prize at the Nordic Conducting Competition in Bergen in 1994.

Highlights of the 2017/18 season see Lintu return to the Tokyo Metropolitan, Washington’s National, Dallas and Detroit symphony orchestras. He also makes his debut with the Naples Philharmonic, Singapore and Hiroshima symphony orchestras. Recent engagements include the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Luzerner Sinfonieorchester, Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia, Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, and the St Louis, Baltimore and Toronto symphony orchestras, as well as three acclaimed European debuts: Staatsorchester Stuttgart Opera, Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien and NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester.

A regular in the pit, Lintu returns to the Savonlinna Opera Festival in July 2018 to conduct Verdi’s Otello – in 2017 he conducted Aulis Sallinen’s Kullervo at Savonlinna as well as Sibelius’s Kullervo for the Finnish National Opera and Ballet as part of their special collaborative project with director/ choreographer Tero Saarinen. Previous productions with Finnish National Opera include Parsifal, Carmen, Sallinen’s King Lear, and Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde in spring 2016. Lintu has also worked with Tampere Opera and Estonian National Opera.

The 2017/18 season marks Hannu Lintu’s fifth year as Chief Conductor of the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra. A concert tour to Russia and a performance of Väinö Raitio’s Princess Cecilia at the Helsinki Festival – part of celebrations marking 100 years of Finnish independence – were among last season’s highlights, and on 6 December 2017 the Orchestra honours both its 90th anniversary and 100-year-old Finland with premieres of newly commissioned works by longtime FRSO collaborator Magnus Lindberg and Lotta Wennäkoski. Other forthcoming engagements include performances of Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle and Beethoven’s Fidelio, and a concert tour to Spain and Germany with cellist Sol Gabetta.

Booklet for Lieberson: Songs of Love and Sorrow & The Six Realms