Of the many Sibelius works inspired by the Kalevala (the Finnish national epic poem), The Origin of Fire remains one of the least familiar and yet most riveting. Scored for baritone, male chorus and orchestra, this glowering compact cantata was written for the 1902 opening of the National Theatre in Helsinki. Osmo Vänskä and his alert Lahti band offer both the original version and Sibelius’s tauter 1910 revision. Tommi Hakala (the 2003 Cardiff Singer of the World) is in magnificent voice, as are the choir of Helsinki University.

Elsewhere, we’re treated to both versions (from 1898 and 1915) of Sandels, to a poem by Johan Ludwig Runeberg depicting General Johan Sandels’s victory at the Battle of Virta Bro during the Russo-Finnish war. The patriotic flavour is even more pronounced in Have you courage? (“Har du mod?”) – 1904, but overhauled at least four times; Vänskä performs Sibelius’s revisions from 1911 and 1914 – and The Captive Queen, a cantata for mixed chorus and orchestra from 1906 and arranged for male choir and orchestra four years later. The noisy March of the Finnish Jaeger Battalion became a rallying song for the eventually victorious “Whites” in the Finnish Civil War of 1918.

Last but definitely not least, there’s The Rapids-Shooter’s Brides, first heard in November 1897 alongside the premiere of Sibelius’s first revision of the Lemminkäinen Suite (with which it shares marked stylistic traits). Vänskä gives us the 1943 arrangement for male choir and orchestra.

Sibelius aficionados will discover plenty here to get their teeth into and can rest assured that that BIS’s engineering and presentation are beyond reproach.