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

• Peter Lieberson (1946 - 2011): The Six Realms:
• 1 The Six Realms: I. The Sorrow of the World 03:40
• 2 The Six Realms: II. The Hell Realm 04:00
• 3 The Six Realms: III. The Hungry Ghost Realm 04:52
• 4 The Six Realms: IV. The Animal Realm 02:54
• 5 The Six Realms: V. The Human Realm 02:37
• 6 The Six Realms: VI. The God Realm and the Jealous God Realm 04:42
• Songs of Love and Sorrow:
• 7 Songs of Love and Sorrow: No. 1, Sonnet XLVI (Live) 06:03
• 8 Songs of Love and Sorrow: No. 2, Sonnet XII (Live) 04:27
• 9 Songs of Love and Sorrow: No. 3, Sonnet LII (Live) 04:46
• 10 Songs of Love and Sorrow: No. 4, Sonnet LXIX (Live) 04:11
• 11 Songs of Love and Sorrow: No. 5, Sonnet LXXXII (Live) 06:32
• Total Runtime 48:44

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
ist seit dem Jahr 2013 Chefdirigent des Finnischen Radio-Sinfonieorchesters. Er studierte Violoncello und Klavier an der Sibelius-Akademie in Helsinki sowie Dirigieren bei Jorma Panula. Er besuchte Meisterkurse bei Myung-Whun Chung und gewann 1994 den ersten Preis beim Nordic Conducting Competition in Bergen. In dieser Spielzeit gastiert Hannu Lintu u. a. beim Deutschen Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, beim Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien sowie bei den Symphonieorchestern von Toronto, Baltimore und Detroit. Zuletzt dirigierte er u. a. The Cleveland Symphony Orchestra, das Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne sowie das Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra. Er tritt immer wieder auch als Operndirigent hervor, so u. a. an der Estonian National Opera, der Tampere Opera und der Finnish National Opera, wo er zuletzt Produktionen von Carmen, Tristan und Isolde, Parsifal und Aulis Sallinens King Lear betreute. Seine CD-Einspielungen mit dem Finnischen Radio-Sinfonieorchester u. a. mit Werken von Gustav Mahler (Sinfonie Nr. 1), Jean Sibelius, Olivier Messiaen und Luciano Berio wurden vielfach ausgezeichnet.

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