Winner, Gramophone Award, 2008, Contemporary category Johnathan Harvey: BODY MANDALA with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Ilan Volkov & Stefan Solom [NMC] "Jonathan Harvey's music juxtaposes moments of disarming simplicity, of naivety almost, with others of considerable sophistication and intricacy. …all but one of these pieces explore different facets of spirituality… Perhaps the most immediately involving is White as Jasmine, based on texts by a 12th-century Hindu saint. Here, soprano Anu Komsi delivers a superbly controlled performance of great vocal beauty. In her first entry, she is virtually indistinguishable from the surrounding instruments (and it's satisfying ... to hear singing in which each pitch can be clearly discerned, vibrato notwithstanding)." Gramophone Magazine, September 2008 Five stars from Andrew Clements, Guardian, UK: George Benjamin: Into the Little Hill [Nimbus Records] "It is a slender, deceptively simple piece, lasting only 40 minutes and scored for just soprano and contralto (Anu Komsi and Hilary Summers, both outstanding) with 15 instrumentalists from Ensemble Modern conducted by Franck Ollu. The piece has barely enough dramatic trappings to qualify even as music theatre and while it probably could be presented more lavishly than Daniel Jeanneteau's staging in the Opéra Bastille's amphitheatre, it is the very economy of means - the action is played out around the ensemble, with the two singers sharing the narration and playing all the roles with a minimum of props - that gives the work its elegance and poetic power." Anu Komsi and Hillary Summers - VII The minister and the stranger, Into the Little Hill (.wav) PETRI NIEMINEN ENSEMBLE: Night Walk; Wertheres 1, 2, and 3; Solaris; Last Year's Fall [Alba] ANU KOMSI SINGS EINO LEINO: Saariaho, Kaipainen, Melartin, Kuula, Merikanto, Kortekangas, with pianist Pia Värri [Alba, ABCD 231] Esa-Pekka Salonen: FLOOF [Finlandia-Warner] Esa-Pekka Salonen: WING ON WING [Deutsche Grammophon] Shostakovich: FINNISH FOLKSONGS [Bis] Kaija Saariaho: GRAMMAR OF DREAMS [Ondine] Nielsen: 3. SYMPHONY [Bis] György Kurtag: KAFKA FRAGMENTS OP.24 [Ondine] Gustav Mahler: Symphony No. 4 with Sir Roger Norrington and Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart des SWR, [Hänssler Classic, CD 93.164]