"Excellent recordings of three of Englund's finest works... Strongly recommended." Gramophone magazine on Jorma Panula conducting the composer's orchestral works for Naxos.
The Finnish conductor Jorma Panula graduated from the Sibelius Academy as a cantor-organist in 1950, aged 20, and as a conductor in 1953. He subsequently served as Professor in Orchestral Conducting at the academy from 1973 to 1993. From 1965 to 1972, he was Principal Conductor of the Helsinki Philharmonic and from 1963 to 1997 he served as artistic director of the Turku Philharmonic Orchestra of Finland and of the Aarhus Symphony of Denmark.
Jorma Panula has been a visiting professor at the music academies of Stockholm and Copenhagen, and has conducted the world's leading symphony orchestras. Panula has also been credited with the recent proliferation of conducting excellence from Finland. His former students are Esa-Pekka Salonen, music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic; Jukka-Pekka Saraste, music director of the Toronto Symphony; Sakari Oramo, principal conductor designate of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and the young, up-and-coming Mikko Franck.
As composer, Professor Panula has written operas (Jaakko Ilkka, The River Opera), musicals, church music, a violin concerto, a jazz capriccio as well as vocal music. In 1997, Professor Panula was awarded the distinguished Music Prize by the Royal Swedish Academy of Science.
Jorma Panula's home is in the scenic suburb of Laajasalo. The cosmopolitan conductor still speaks Finnish with the strong accent and colourful idiom of his native Ostrobothnia. Whenever the occasion presents itself, he also wears the distinctive national costume of the region.
For Naxos, with the Turku Philharmonic, Jorma Panula has recorded Sibelius' symphonic poem Kullervo; Uuno Klami's Kalevala Suite and Sea Pictures; a selection of Einar Englund's orchestral works and a very popular and acclaimed disc of Finnish Orchestral Favourites.
On Da Capo, with the Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, he has made a disc of Per Norgard's Remembering Child and Between.
October 2001
