Sibelius and Szymanowski

Young Korean virtuoso Sueye Park announced her arrival on the international music scene with a critically-acclaimed recording of one of the hardest works in the repertoire: Paganini’s finger-twisting 24 Caprices. Following equally lauded recordings of Karol Szymanowski’s violin and piano works - and regular collaborations with Osmo Vänskä’s Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra - she joins the conductor once more here for the richest, most hypnotic violin concerto in the repertory: Szymanowski’s first, followed by his impassioned, opulent Concert Overture.

After the interval, Vänskä turns to his first love. No conductor on earth can rival the Finn in performances of Sibelius’s orchestral works, and here Vänskä takes the orchestra through the composer’s most powerful. In his Symphony No. 5, Sibelius harnessed the symbolic power of the Nordic country’s emblematic swan to create his most powerful testament to the power of nature and the most thrilling denouement of his symphonic career.