Fire and Ice

Sakari Oramo, the Gürzenich Orchestra’s Artistic Partner, is a renowned expert for music of the North, where fire and ice merge: his recordings of Carl Nielsen’s and Jean Sibelius’ symphonic works have been internationally acclaimed, winning multiple awards. Nielsen’s Symphony No. 5 echoes the horrors of World War I, with a snare drum relentlessly marching ahead, driving the dynamics. Only the finale brings a fiery celebration of life and its joys. The symphony’s complex structure and progressive tonal idiom proved too challenging for audiences during Nielsen’s lifetime. Today, however, his Fifth counts as one of the outstanding symphonic works of the 20^th century. Jean Sibelius’ tone poem Finlandia, on the other hand, became its creator’s most well-known and popular work immediately after its premiere. Sibelius himself characterized this sweeping invocation of the independence of his homeland from Russia’s reign of violence a »battle song and anthem for victory«. 

In the »New World«, in New York, Antonín Dvořák longed for the sounds of his Bohemian homeland and grieved the early death of the love of his youth, to whom he created a moving monument in his Cello Concerto. The young Finnish cellist Senja Rummunkainen, who has recently become a sought-after performer throughout the world, immerses herself in the incomparable beauty of this bravura piece – goosebumps guaranteed.