Music from Finland brings our quick survey of Nordic music over the previous few weeks to an in depth. For most individuals, the nation’s repute for classical music might be dominated by the title of Jean Sibelius
(1865–1957), so this weblog will attempt to flip the highlight on works by different composers deserving of air-time.
Fredrik Pacius
Supply: Wikimedia Commons – Public Area
We begin with music by a composer born some sixty years earlier than Sibelius, particularly Fredrik Pacius (1809–1891). Thought to be the daddy of Finnish music, Pacius was the composer of the primary Finnish opera, The Hunt of King Charles, which had its premiere in Helsinki in 1852. At the moment the language of the theatre and the opera home was Swedish, and accordingly the work has a Swedish textual content, though the opera is commonly carried out in a Finnish translation.
The plot, set in 1671, centres on King Charles XI, ruler of Sweden and Finland, instantly earlier than he reached an age to imagine management of his kingdom. The music itself stays near fashions similar to Weber’s Freischütz and Oberon, and there are additionally hints of Beethoven, not least within the alternative of the title Leonora for the heroine. I’ve chosen a bouncy extract from Act II – the Shanty and Refrain – that interprets as A scurvy tar is such a person.
The Hunt of King Charles (8.225317-18)
Erkki Melartin
© Finnish Heritage Company
Now to a composer who was a direct modern of Sibelius, Erkki Melartin (1875–1937). His research included two years in Vienna with Robert Fuchs, whose pupils had included Mahler, Sibelius and Korngold. Composition was his life blood, along with pursuits within the discipline of schooling. It was due to his efforts – in the course of the Nineteen Thirties melancholy, no much less – {that a} purpose-built constructing for the Helsinki Conservatory, the primary of its variety, was accomplished in 1932. It stays in using the Sibelius Academy to this present day.
The twenty first century has introduced a revival of curiosity in Melartin’s music and his significance within the discipline of Finnish music. Lengthy-forgotten masterpieces, beforehand unrecorded, have once more seen the sunshine of day. One of the important of those is the tone poem Traumgesicht Op. 70, written in 1910. Alexander Siloti, one of many huge names within the musical lifetime of Russia’s St Petersburg, invited Melartin to supply and conduct one among his shorter works within the metropolis. With nothing appropriate out there, Melartin set to work instantly on creating a brand new piece. Six weeks later, he accomplished Traumgesicht, writing to a good friend in late August 1910:
“I’ve been working terribly arduous. The evening earlier than final I accomplished Traumgesicht after 15 hours of labor that day. Siloti lit such a hearth below me by telegraphing and writing me sometimes. Once I had instructed him what I used to be doing, he needed to see the start, after which he urged me to ship ‘taglich mehr, taglich mehr’ [daily more, daily more]! He’s very delighted. It’s a terribly troublesome piece, and such orchestral writing has by no means earlier than been tried on this nation.”
Lasting some quarter-hour, I’ve chosen the opening part of the work to reveal Melartin’s distinctive voice.
Traumgesicht (ODE1283-2)
Oskar Merikanto
Picture: Salon Strindberg
Smaller scale music now, with a tune by Oskar Merikanto (1868–1924) whose works loved monumental recognition from early in his profession. Sibelius was seen as an unequivocally ‘intellectual’ composer, appreciated primarily among the many higher lessons; Merikanto, nevertheless, managed to bridge the hole between live performance music and most of the people throughout a interval when the framework of musical life in Finland was solely simply being established. On this sense, Merikanto’s efforts have been of immeasurable worth.
Merikanto was not solely a composer but additionally a pianist, the organist of Johannes Church in Helsinki, an organ inspector, a conductor, a music critic and a trainer. Provided that he was an lively accompanist, it’s unsurprising that solo songs (he wrote about 150) type the most effective recognized and most significant slice of his output, lots of which stay to this present day among the many all-time favorite Finnish songs of any style. Right here’s his Myrskylintu (Stormbird).
Myrskylintu (ODE1111-2)
Kaija Saariaho
Picture: Maarit Kytöharju/FIMIC
Subsequent, I’ve chosen three items by residing Finnish composers, the primary by Kaija Saariaho who celebrated her seventieth birthday in 2022. Orion is one among her largest orchestral works, written in 2002 and forged in three actions. The topic of Orion presents two contrasting necessities: the picture of him as the enormous hunter of Greek delusion, recognized not only for his nice magnificence but additionally for his prodigious power and bravado; and his placement by Zeus as a stellar constellation, following his loss of life by the hands of Artemis the huntress. These contrasting traits of hyperactive hunter and static heavenly physique could be heard in each the frenzy and stasis of the ultimate motion, Hunter.
Orion (ODE1130-2)
Aulis Sallinen
Picture: Maarit Kytöharju/FIMIC
Born in 1935, Aulis Sallinen’s model of composition has mirrored extra of a standard strategy to melody, tonality and texture, typically described as ‘audience-friendly’. He wrote Dawn Serenade in 1989 within the wake of the completion of his opera Kullervo, the plot of which embodies a tragic story of distress. Possibly as each an extension to and redemption from that theme, Dawn Serenade (scored for two trumpets, piano and string orchestra) treads a melancholy transition from darkness to gentle.
Dawn Serenade (8.553747)
Magnus Lindberg
Picture: Sigurd Gartmann
Magnus Lindberg (b. 1958) got here to the rapid consideration of the world of classical music when he introduced his creative credo as a budding composer within the late Nineteen Seventies. Along with Finnish contemporaries similar to Kaija Saariaho, referred to earlier, he fashioned a bunch with the title ‘Ears Open!’ (Korvat Auki!) in 1977 with the objective of reviving the spirit of modernism and innovation in Finnish musical tradition. The variations between Lindberg’s piano works courting from that interval and people composed within the early years of the twenty first century can appear fairly stark. Whereas his early works are based mostly strictly on serial procedures, the emergence of a vibrant, extra approachable model could be heard in works similar to the 2 Etudes (2001/2004), which even share harmonic, textural and stylistic parallels with Chopin, Liszt, Debussy, Rachmaninov, Scriabin and Messiaen.
Listed here are two quick items to allow that comparability: first, the third of his Tre Pianostycke (1978), adopted by the Etude No. 2 (2004).
Tre Pianostycke (8.570542)
Etude No. 2 (8.570542)
Jean Sibelius
Lastly to Sibelius. However, with a composing profession that spanned some 80 years, which piece of his to decide on? Recalling a live performance I as soon as attended given by the Berlin Philharmonic below Simon Rattle prompt the reply. I’d been commissioned to write down a assessment of the occasion, which featured Berlioz’s overture Le corsaire, Ravel’s Mom Goose Suite and an electrifying efficiency of Beethoven’s Third Symphony. What’s going to they select for an encore, I questioned, that would high out that form of programme? The reply was Sibelius’ Scene with Cranes that kinds a part of his incidental music for the play Kuolema. In describing the efficiency for the readership, I bear in mind deciding that the easiest way to convey its mesmerising impact was to write down: “Making an attempt to explain the great thing about the piece and the efficiency can be like reducing the throat of a songbird to search out out what makes it sing.” So, I’ll go away you to determine if that resonates to any diploma with you following this efficiency by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra below Pietari Inkinen.
Scene with Cranes (8.570763)
