LINTU CONDUCTS SIBELIUS work boasts two International Classical Music Awards and several nominations for Gramophone and GRAMMY awards.
Lintu studied cello and piano at the Sibelius Academy, where he later studied conducting with Jorma Panula, and took first prize at the Nordic Conducting Competition in Bergin in 1994.
Francesco Piemontesi
Francesco Piemontesi is a pianist of exceptional refinement of expression, which is allied to a consummate technical skill. Widely renowned for his interpretation of Mozart and the early Romantic repertoire, Piemontesi’ s pianism and sensibility has a close affinity too with the later 19th and 20th century repertoire of Brahms, Liszt, Dvořák, Ravel, Debussy, Bartók, and beyond. Of one of his great teachers and mentors, Alfred Brendel, Piemontesi says that Brendel taught him“ to love the detail of things.”
He appears alongside the world’ s leading orchestras from the Berliner
Francesco Piemontesi
Philharmoniker to the New York Philharmonic, and from London to NHK Symphony Orchestras, and is a regular guest at festivals such as the Salzburg, Lucerne, Schleswig-Holstein Musik festivals, as well as the BBC Proms.
Highlights of Piemontesi’ s 2025 – 26 season include the“ Wizard of Sound”( Neue Zürcher Zeitung), returning to Orchestre de la Suisse Romande( where he was formerly Artist in Residence) for the world premiere of Beat Furrer’ s Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 2, before joining the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen
Camille Blake
Rundfunks for subsequent performances. Additional returns include Leipzig Gewandhausorchester, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony, Seoul Philharmonic, and tours with Royal Scottish National Orchestra, and Mahler Chamber Orchestra. He debuts with the Atlanta, Baltimore, and Detroit Symphony Orchestras.
In recital, Piemontesi delivers pure piano poetry to the Musikverein, Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Wigmore Hall, Schubertiade, Basel, Siena and Alicante. He also collaborates with Augustin Hadelich in recitals across the U. S., weaving the sonatas for violin and piano of Debussy, Poulenc, and Franck with works by de Grigny, Rameau, and Kurtág.
His discography with Pentatone includes recent Liszt( 2023), Bach( 2021) and Schubert( 2019) albums. In fall 2025, Piemontesi released the first of two Brahms discs, featuring the composer’ s late solo piano works and concertos with Leipzig Gewandhausorchester and Manfred Honeck.
NOTES ON THE PROGRAM
By James M. Keller
Jean Sibelius
Born: December 8, 1865, in Tavastehus( Hämeenlinna), Finland Died: September 20, 1957, in Järvenpää, Finland
NIGHT RIDE AND SUNRISE, OP. 55 [ 1908 ]
The seven symphonies Jean Sibelius composed from 1899 to 1924 stake his place among the most imposing orchestral composers of the 20th century, but his catalogue also includes many smaller works for orchestra, including more than a dozen symphonic poems. Much was weighing on him when he wrote the symphonic poem Night Ride and Sunrise, including a throat ailment that eluded medical diagnosis. A pessimist at heart, he decided it was cancer, but it finally turned out to be a benign tumor. After surgery, his physicians insisted that he renounce cigars and alcohol. He hewed to this regime from 1908 until 1915, after which he increasingly surrendered himself to alcoholism.
He gave conflicting stories about what inspired Night Ride and Sunrise, but the most credible involves a horse-drawn sleighride from Helsinki to Korva( 350 miles to the north), during which he witnessed an unforgettable sunrise.“ The whole heavens were a sea of colors that shifted and flowed, producing the most inspiring sight until it all ended in a growing light,” he recalled. He worried about the title, fearing that listeners might expect a forthright piece of descriptive program music, whereas his goal was to seize the psychological element— the feelings of someone riding through the forest at night
and, after many hours, experiencing the awesome pre-dawn silence and the ecstasy of the sunrise.
The intuitive listener will guess from the title that the piece unrolls in two sections, the“ Night Ride” and the“ Sunrise.” The ride itself is arguably monotonous, with the trochaic rhythm of trotting horses— dum-da-dum-da-dumda-dum— repeating relentlessly in the quiet, darkened landscape for some 300 measures. At the half-way point, night birds emit little calls and soon the sun begins to rise: a transcendent moment entrusted to the brass, playing as a restrained chorus.
Instrumentation: Two flutes and piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets and bass clarinet, two bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, snare drum, tambourine, bass drum, and strings.
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