Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra

Sakari Oramo is one of Finland’s international star conductors and is known for his extended engagements with orchestras and for his sense of responsibility. During the Year of the Coronavirus, his duties with his orchestras in London and Stockholm were suspended almost completely, but his new job as Professor of Orchestral Training and Orchestra Conducting with the world-famous conducting class of the Sibelius Academy has kept him busy. Here, he is responsible not only for Finland’s reputation in orchestra conducting but also for our standard of orchestral playing, which has recently become a cause for concern.

"Though it’s naturally heartening to see Finnish musicians on a Finnish label keeping up the stream of Nordgren recordings, it’s high time the rest of the world caught on to this remarkable music."

When the Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra brings together some of the works that over the years have been dedicated to the orchestra’s long-standing Artistic Director and now Honorary Conductor Juha Kangas, it is obviously going to be a collection of emotionally and expressively powerful and excellent music – pieces tailor-made for the orchestra’s deep-rooted sound and intense music-making.

Pehr Henrik Nordgren’s music often has a ritual, pictorial quality that generates a powerfully disturbing sense of atmosphere, of foreboding, as this album perfectly illustrates.

The Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra is now working up even more steam with a view to enhancing its international reputation.

The moment the Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra begins to play, the listener finds himself swept along in a grip that does not relax until the echo of the very last note has died away. It makes no difference whether the piece in question is a masterly miniature by Sibelius or the work of an unfamiliar ballet composer. The listener to this illustrious band is inclined to think that there is, maybe, no such thing as good and bad music, just music suited to different times, places and moods.