Classical FINDS 4 – The Naxos Weblog

Music from Finland brings our brief survey of Nordic music over the previous few weeks to a detailed. For most individuals, the nation’s popularity for classical music might be dominated by the identify of Jean Sibelius
(1865–1957), so this weblog will try to flip the highlight on works by different composers deserving of air-time.

We begin with music by a composer born some sixty years earlier than Sibelius, particularly Fredrik Pacius (1809–1891). Considered 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 usually 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 resembling Weber’s Freischütz and Oberon, and there are additionally hints of Beethoven, not least within the alternative of the identify 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 up to date 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 area of training. It was due to his efforts – in the course of the Nineteen Thirties despair, 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 today.

The twenty first century has introduced a revival of curiosity in Melartin’s music and his significance within the area of Finnish music. Lengthy-forgotten masterpieces, beforehand unrecorded, have once more seen the sunshine of day. Probably the most vital of those is the tone poem Traumgesicht Op. 70, written in 1910. Alexander Siloti, one of many large names within the musical lifetime of Russia’s St Petersburg, invited Melartin to offer and conduct one in every of his shorter works within the metropolis. With nothing appropriate accessible, Melartin set to work instantly on creating a brand new piece. Six weeks later, he accomplished Traumgesicht, writing to a pal in late August 1910:

“I’ve been working terribly laborious. The evening earlier than final I accomplished Traumgesicht after 15 hours of labor that day. Siloti lit such a fireplace beneath me by telegraphing and writing me now and again. After 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 tough 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 display Melartin’s distinctive voice.

Traumgesicht (ODE1283-2)

Oskar Merikanto
Photograph: Salon Strindberg

Smaller scale music now, with a track by Oskar Merikanto (1868–1924) whose works loved huge recognition from early in his profession. Sibelius was seen as an unequivocally ‘intellectual’ composer, appreciated primarily among the many higher courses; Merikanto, nonetheless, managed to bridge the hole between live performance music and most people throughout a interval when the framework of musical life in Finland was solely simply being established. On this sense, Merikanto’s efforts had been of immeasurable worth.

Merikanto was not solely a composer but in addition a pianist, the organist of Johannes Church in Helsinki, an organ inspector, a conductor, a music critic and a instructor. On condition that he was an lively accompanist, it’s unsurprising that solo songs (he wrote about 150) type one of the best recognized and most significant slice of his output, lots of which stay to today among the many all-time favorite Finnish songs of any style. Right here’s his Myrskylintu (Stormbird).

Myrskylintu (ODE1111-2)

Kaija Saariaho
Photograph: Maarit Kytöharju/FIMIC

Subsequent, I’ve chosen three items by dwelling Finnish composers, the primary by Kaija Saariaho who celebrated her seventieth birthday in 2022. Orion is one in every of 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 fantasy, recognized not only for his nice magnificence but in addition 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
Photograph: Maarit Kytöharju/FIMIC

Born in 1935, Aulis Sallinen’s fashion of composition has mirrored extra of a standard strategy to melody, tonality and texture, generally 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
Photograph: Sigurd Gartmann

Magnus Lindberg (b. 1958) got here to the instant consideration of the world of classical music when he introduced his creative credo as a budding composer within the late Seventies. Along with Finnish contemporaries resembling Kaija Saariaho, referred to earlier, he fashioned a bunch with the identify ‘Ears Open!’ (Korvat Auki!) in 1977 with the aim 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 primarily based strictly on serial procedures, the emergence of a vibrant, extra approachable fashion could be heard in works resembling the 2 Etudes (2001/2004), which even share harmonic, textural and stylistic parallels with Chopin, Liszt, Debussy, Rachmaninov, Scriabin and Messiaen.

Listed below are two brief 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 beneath Simon Rattle urged the reply. I’d been commissioned to write down a evaluation 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 is going to they select for an encore, I puzzled, that might high out that type of programme? The reply was Sibelius’ Scene with Cranes that varieties a part of his incidental music for the play Kuolema. In describing the efficiency for the readership, I keep in mind deciding that the easiest way to convey its mesmerising impact was to write down: “Attempting to explain the fantastic 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 beneath Pietari Inkinen.

Scene with Cranes (8.570763)