Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra/ Susanna Mälkki
BIS BIS-2638 78:38 mins
One of the sadnesses in today’s classical concert scene is how little the shorter orchestral works of so many composers are performed. Sibelius’s ‘The Swan of Tuonela’, from his suite Lemminkäinen, used to feature regularly in programmes, and yet today even this is a rarity. No such issues apply in Sibelius’s native Finland; and this survey attractively presents some of the byways of Sibelius’s music as a prelude to Lemminkäinen, one of his major creations.
A choice early example of Sibelius’s gift for popular-touch orchestral music was Karelia, celebrating the history and culture of the region then in eastern Finland (now part of the Russian Federation). Susanna Mälkki’s thoughtful approach to this three-movement suite likeably brings out the music’s deeper side, for instance in the central ‘Ballade’, without in any way inflating it.
The results are equally fine in Lemminkäinen’s four-movement portrait of the life and exploits (mostly romantic) of the Finnish folk-hero. There are moments when Sibelius’s flair for atmosphere isn’t conveyed: the wonderful scene-setting at the start of the suite’s opening movement, ‘Lemminkäinen and the Maidens of the Island’, doesn’t come across as it could.’ And while the suite Rakastava is finely played by the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra’s string section, the rather forthright result misses the music’s whispered tenderness.
But there are major strengths here too. Mälkki and the orchestra remarkably conjure the dark, swirling soundworld of ‘Lemminkäinen in Tuonela’ (the Hades of Finnish legend). And the concluding ‘Lemminkäinen’s Return’ canters along in roistering style.