Continue the journey…
We suggest further works to explore after Sibelius’s Symphony No. 7
TKuula’s two suites give tantalising glimpses of what might have been
he Seventh was not the end of Sibelius’s symphonic journey. However, as he condemned the score of his Eighth to the fire in a fit of despair, his Tapiola of 1926 was effectively his orchestral swansong. Lasting around 20 minutes, this tone poem is a portrayal of Tapio, the Finnish forest spirit – a feel of uneasiness and mystery is punctuated by flurries of activity in what is, even by Sibelian standards, a masterpiece of atmospheric writing. (Lahti So/okko Kamu BIS BISSACD1945).
Sibelius’s junior by 20 years or so, the Finn Leevi Madetoja could perhaps consider himself unlucky not to be better known today. Of his three extant symphonies (the Fourth was apparently lost at a railway station), head for the big-boned Second, premiered in 1918 with Sibelius in the audience. It was described soon after by one critic as ‘the most remarkable achievement in our music since the monumental series of Sibelius’. (Helsinki Philharmonic/
John Storgårds Ondine ODE12122).
Sadly, Sibelius’s composition pupil Toivo Kuula did not live long enough to hear his teacher’s later symphonies, as he died of a bullet wound sustained in an argument in May 1918. While Kuula is best known for his vocal music, his two South Ostrobothnian Suites for orchestra give hints of Sibelius’s influence and tantalising glimpses of what might have been. (Turku Philharmonic/leif Segerstam Ondine ODE12702).
Though Aarre Merikanto later took himself in a more atonal direction, his youthful First Symphony of 1916 is Romantic through and through – not least in the broadly sweeping melody in the strings that opens the gorgeous third movement, complete with its dreamy violin solo. (Turku Philharmonic Orchestra/petri Sakari Alba ABCD336).
One last Finn: Merikanto’s student Einojuhani Rautavaara, who was recommended for a scholarship at the Juilliard School by an ageing Sibelius in 1954. Two years later, he produced the first of his eight (wildly differing) symphonies, a work in which two darkly brooding movements are followed by an anxious, fidgety finale. Rautavaara revised the First twice, in 1988 and 2003. (Orchestre National de Belgique/ Mikko Franck Ondine ODE10645).