Anu Komsi
Biography Anu Komsi
Praised for her multifaceted musicianship and dynamic coloratura voice, Anu Komsi
appears regularly across Europe and in the USA. She is a versatile recitalist and chamber musician with a repertoire ranging from Renaissance to con- temporary music, and her 2011 performance in John Zorn’s La Machine de l’être at New York City Opera was described as ‘pyrotechnic grace’ in the New York Magazine. Engagements at leading opera houses such as the Finnish Na- tional Opera, Opéra Bastille, Théâtre du Châtelet, Oper Frankfurt and Staatsoper Stuttgart include some 50 roles, among them Lulu, Zerbinetta, Nannetta, Olympia, Micaela and Gilda. Anu Komsi also appears in contemporary works such as Lady Sarashina by Peter Eötvös, Philomela by James Dillon and George Benjamin’s Into the Little Hill, with a role especially written for her.
Anu Komsi has performed with orchestras such as the Berlin, Los Angeles and New York Philharmonics, the Wiener Symphoniker, Ensemble Modern and London Sinfonietta. Conductors with whom she has collaborated include Sir Roger Norrington, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Heinz Holliger, Sakari Oramo, Franz Welser-Möst and Alan Gilbert. Recent highlights include performances of Szy- manowski’s Six Songs of a Fairy-Tale Princess at the Berlin Philharmonie, Britten’s Les Illuminations at the Vienna Musikverein and a highly acclaimed début at the Salzburg Festival in Morton Feldman’s Neither.
Since 2006, Anu Komsi has been the artistic director of the West Coast Kok- kola Opera company, of which she is a founding member. Productions include Le Nozze di Figaro, Lulu and Sebastian Fagerlund’s Döbeln, commissioned by the company and released on BIS in a highly acclaimed recording in 2010. Anu Komsi has a wide-ranging discography on various labels, including, on BIS, the world première recording of Shostakovich’s Suite on Finnish Themes (BIS-CD- 1256). In 2008 Anu Komsi was honoured with an award from the Finnish Cul- tural Foundation.
The Lahti Symphony Orchestra (Sinfonia Lahti)
has, under the direction of Osmo Vänskä (principal conductor 1988–2008), developed into one of the most notable in Europe. In 2011 Okko Kamu took up the post of principal conductor. Since 2000 the orchestra has been based at the wooden Sibelius Hall. Its many outstanding recording projects for BIS has earned it a number of prestigious awards including two Gramophone Awards and a Diapason d’or de l’année. Besides appearing at numerous festivals, including the BBC Proms in London, the Lahti Symphony Orchestra has also performed in Amsterdam, at the Musikverein in Vienna and at the Philharmonie in Berlin, and has toured in Spain, Japan, Germany, the USA and China. Each September the Lahti Symphony Orchestra organizes an international Sibelius Festival at the Sibelius Hall.
Sakari Oramo
began his musical career as a violinist, and for some years was leader of the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra. He made his breakthrough as a conductor in 1993, since when he has conducted many of the world’s most prestigious orchestras including the Vienna, Berlin and New York Philharmonic Orchestras, Dresden Staatskapelle and San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. For ten years he conducted the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra; during this time he was awarded honorary doctorates by two English universities, the Elgar Medal and the title of Birmingham’s most popular cultural personality. Oramo is currently principal conductor of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, and after nine years at the helm of the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, will take over as chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra in 2013. In the Finnish city of Kokkola, Oramo is artistic director of the Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra and the West Coast Kokkola Opera. Sakari Oramo appears on a large number of highly praised recordings, primarily as a conductor but also as a violinist and chamber musician.
