Spring Will Come: Choral Rarities from the Grand Duchy of Finland
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Genre:
Vocal
Label: BIS
Magazine Review Date: 01/2019
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 53
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: BIS2442
Author: Andrew Mellor
On one level, we sense what a radical and refreshing voice Sibelius’s must have been. On another, we hear technically secure composers with strong instincts and, occasionally, the green shoots of a distinctive national voice. Spring works neatly as a both a seasonal and political theme, and ‘Spring Morning’ by Fredrik Pacius – the German national who kick-started Finland’s music life and wrote the Finnish national anthem – suggests music bursting at the seams of what the composer tried to sew into it structurally. The performance here might have been a little slower and more considered. But despite occasional strain in the soprano group, the Helsinki Chamber Choir otherwise sing with precision, body, good diction and some variation in colour.
Other works of interest include Rafael Laethén’s ‘Evening Song’; there was a strong tradition of choral evening serenades in the Nordic countries but this one is notably more matter-of-fact despite some sense of inner glow. Where we do hear the Finnish language, it’s interesting how its more pointillist sound shapes the musical texture (as in Emil Sivori’s arrangement of ‘Joy and Sorrow’) while, in contrast, the harmonic stasis of Pekka Juhani Hannikainen’s ‘The Singing Girl from Punkaharju’ feels like a premonition of Sibelian minimalism (though the exact date of the song isn’t stated and he died in 1924, so Hannikainen may well have heard Tapiola).
As the pre-eminent songwriter of the day, Oskar Merikanto’s works don’t disappoint, but still it’s diverting to hear the overlapping textures of his ‘In the East Wind’. Perhaps the most distinctive voice is that of Armas Järnefelt, who weaves longer stories in his works and allows the shape of Finnish words to dictate the contours of the phrase – the technique his brother-in-law would make his own. Among a great deal of middle-of-the-road 19th-century fare, his ‘The Path of the Beloved’ stands out from its opening chord.
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