Sibelius: Snöfrid; Overture in A minor; Coronation Cantata; Rakastava; Oma maa; Andante festivo

Snöfrid is an ‘improvisation’ for speaker, mixed chorus and orchestra dating from 1900, music designed to accompany lines from Rydberg’s poem. It is the major rarity in this valuable collection of shorter works, and is well worth investigating. It is very characteristic of early Sibelius, often powerful and consistent in quality. The A minor Overture was written two years later to fill out a programme which included the premiere of the Second Symphony, and its neglect is quite unjustified.

Our rating

4

Published: January 20, 2012 at 3:50 pm

COMPOSERS: Sibelius
LABELS: BIS
WORKS: Snöfrid; Overture in A minor; Coronation Cantata; Rakastava; Oma maa; Andante festivo
PERFORMER: Stina Ekblad (narrator), Jaakko Kuusisto (violin), Ilkka Pälli (cello); Jubilate Choir, Lahti SO/Osmo Vänskä
CATALOGUE NO: CD-1265

Snöfrid is an ‘improvisation’ for speaker, mixed chorus and orchestra dating from 1900, music designed to accompany lines from Rydberg’s poem. It is the major rarity in this valuable collection of shorter works, and is well worth investigating. It is very characteristic of early Sibelius, often powerful and consistent in quality. The A minor Overture was written two years later to fill out a programme which included the premiere of the Second Symphony, and its neglect is quite unjustified. It looks forward to the period of the Voces intimae Quartet which one of its themes actually anticipates. In the first volume of his Sibelius biography, Erik Tawaststjerna dismissed the Coronation Cantata of 1896 as ‘a banal, homophonic choral piece’; and indeed, by Sibelius’s exalted standards (this is after all the period of the Lemminkäinen Legends), inspiration is pretty thin. On the other hand Oma maa (My own Land) comes from the last year of the First World War and is, I think, an even stronger piece than I gave it credit for in my Master Musician monograph, or at least so it seems in this performance. The 1912 transcription of Rakastava (The Lover) for strings and percussion is Sibelius at his most inspired and poignant. As one expects from the Lahti Orchestra under Osmo Vänskä’s direction, and from BIS, these are expert performances given very truthful recording. Robert Layton

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