Scenes From Finland

Sibelius: Suite from Scaramouche; Palmgren: Tuhkimo ja kuninkaantytär; Englund: Valkoinen peura (The White Reindeer); Tuukkanen: Joulusarja (Christmas Suite)

Oulu Sinfonia - Lasse Joamets concert master
Rumon Gamba
Chandos CHSA 5391
chandos.net

You expect Sibelius to dominate a disc like this, and for once he doesn't get the last word. That is the delight of this third instalment in Chandos's ongoing survey of music from Finland, following the label's Overtures from Finland and Pictures from Finland: an ingenious series that keeps finding new light to shine on a repertoire most collectors think begins and ends with the symphonies.

Sibelius does open proceedings, with his Suite from Scaramouche, the ballet-pantomime he wrote in 1912 for Poul Knudsen's play. It arrived at the height of Europe's fascination with clowns, commedia dell'arte and the darker undertow of erotic longing and death that also gave us Stravinsky's Petrushka and Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire — cousins under the greasepaint, if not under the skin. The Tranquillo assai is the movement to hear this disc for: the balance Chandos achieves here is exceptional, and Albert Stupak's flute floats above the orchestra like breath on cold glass. The strings, throughout, are nothing short of delectable.

Selim Palmgren is best remembered as a composer for the piano, so it's a pleasure to be reminded he wrote for the stage too. His score for the fairy-tale play Tuhkimo ja kuninkaantytär (Tuhkimo and the Princess), composed in 1902–03, sets Larin-Kyösti's tale of a headstrong young hero — Cinderella refracted through a kaleidoscope of folk tale and fable rather than told straight.

Einar Englund studied under Palmgren before crossing the Atlantic to work with Copland, and it's his soundtrack for Erik Blomberg's 1952 film Valkoinen peura (The White Reindeer) that gives this disc its most vivid colours — colours that won Englund the best original music prize at that year's Jussi Awards, Finland's answer to the Oscars. Having seen the country for myself, I can vouch for how faithfully the orchestration captures it. As Daniel M. Grimley notes in his booklet essay, the second movement summons the fells' vast emptiness, distant herding calls hanging in air thick with weather on the turn, as though the strings themselves were tracking a change in the wind. The reindeer race that follows is all sleigh bells and breathless momentum, an athlete's sprint set to music. Then comes the funeral march, its grief kept mostly banked down, flaring only occasionally into something raw — the brass here does real work, building the drama without ever overplaying its hand. The finale dances off with genuine folk swagger before the energy drains away like the last smear of daylight over a far ridge. It is a score that deserves far more outings than it gets.

Kalervo Tuukkanen taught at Viipuri University before three years as Kapellmeister in Pori on the Baltic coast, and was among the founders of the Finnish Composers' Association; his Karhunpyynti (Bear Hunting) took silver at the 1948 Cultural Olympics in London, where Finland — improbably, delightfully — topped the medal table. His Joulusarja (Christmas Suite), drawn from his 1953 music for Walter Bauer's play Die Erzählung des letzten Hirten, closes the disc in five movements tracing the Christmas story. The opening is properly atmospheric, and by the time the familiar chordal turns of "Rauhan viesti" arrive, you are quite thoroughly transported — sleigh bells optional.

The Oulu Sinfonia are the real stars of this cycle: precise, accurate, never once caught fumbling for a note, with woodwind and strings that make light and melody of everything put in front of them.

Four composers, one landscape, and not a single weak link in the chain — Sibelius would probably approve of the company he's keeping