Erkki Melartin was an important figure in Finnish music history, but he was only 10 years Sibelius’s junior, and until recently his music has been languishing in the shadows. Traumgesicht, the 1910 orchestral tone poem with which this disc begins, is an atmospheric, dreamy score conjuring up night-time visions, with hints of Strauss and, in places, pre-echoes of Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé. It gets a darkly glowing performance here from the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra under Hannu Lintu – as does the suite Lintu has put together from The Blue Pearl, the first complete ballet by a Finnish composer.
The highlight, though, is Marjatta, a setting of part of the Finnish Kalevala myth, commissioned as a companion piece for Sibelius’s Luonnotar and here gloriously sung by soprano Soile Isokoski. It may not be as gripping in its sweep as Sibelius’s work, but it is beautifully evocative.
