Sakari Oramo

"[Oramo’s] grip on the scores was no less firm than his control of his orchestral forces, tempered by a flexibility and precision born of keen musical insight. That much was clear from the gripping performance of Carl Nielsen's Fifth Symphony with which Oramo concluded the program. The music ebbs and flows with eruptive surges of energy followed by pages of uneasy release, all of which Oramo laid out with sweeping authority. If there were more Nielsen advocates as committed as he, Nielsen's music would be smack in the center of the standard symphonic repertory." (John von Rhein, Chicago Tribune, April 2013)

"Sakari Oramo, at the helm of the NDR Sinfonieorchester, pulled out all of the stops enticing a sparkling and effervescent brilliance from the strings and moulding the low brass to sound like a Wagnerian dragon crawling through the undergrowth." (Hamburger Abendblatt, March 2013)

“Sakari Oramo demonstrates very impressive credentials as a Bruckner conductor… There is never a hint of stodginess to this performance, a result no doubt of Oramo’s imaginative ear for orchestral sonority and his insistence on creating the maximum dynamic variety.” (BBC Music Magazine, Christmas 2012)

"The Sibelius symphony that ended the programme was the Third, presented by Oramo in brisk, bold paragraphs that worked to a wonderfully definitive climax" (The Guardian, October 2011)

“This first concert in the orchestra’s Sibelius symphony cycle marked Oramo’s first appearance with a London orchestra. Many others should follow...Strings deserve the top prize for subtleties of tone and attack, but each instrumental section excelled — something only possible when a conductor and the BBC players click...Oramo and the orchestra also fitted like hand and glove in Arnold Bax’s Tintagel” (The Times, October 2011)

“The performance of the Third Symphony which followed sounded new-minted, as if Oramo had re-thought every bar. The middle movement is often rendered as an innocuous serenade, but here the music unfolded with meditative slowness, as if it were discovering its own richness….The whole thing revealed Oramo’s masterly hand” (The Telegraph, October 2011)

“The Finnish conductor held the Sibelian sea swell and magical orchestral perspectives perfectly in balance with the film-fanfare-ish yet impeccably crafted themes. Nothing too brash or noisy here; one only wished that Bax had decided to end with the time-suspending hushed calm that was the most impressive feature of Oramo's layered interpretation” (The Arts Desk, October 2011)