Bliss: Checkmate Suite, Hymn to Apollo, etc / Handley, et al

Perhaps in no other case in the history of classical music is a national tradition as dominated by a single figure as occurs with Finland and Jean Sibelius. The music on this 2025 release by the Oulu Sinfonia and conductor Rumon Gamba is all but unknown, at least outside Finland, and it does a good deal to illuminate the context in which Sibelius worked. Sibelius himself is present, with the Kurkikohtaus, the Scene with Cranes, Op. 44, No. 2, from the same set that includes the famed Valse triste. Those who spend their time rating classical composers as if they were baseball players will indeed find that Sibelius stands head and shoulders above the other composers here. However, the other composers pursued pictorial and rhapsodic genres here that resembled those in Sibelius music, even if there is nothing to suggest the radical-even-if-tonal structure of his symphonies. Hear Aus Finnland, Op. 24, a four-seasons set by Selim Palmgren, whose four movements differ sharply in color. The final sleigh ride may be Russian in its mood, but the other movements are not. Leevi Madetojas Marian murhe, Op. 27, No. 2 (Stabat mater), features the Madetoja Music High Schools Girls Choir, whose lovely performance gives a hint as to the bench depth of Finnish performers, and it is a gorgeously meditative piece. The only composer here that may be familiar to non-Finnish listeners is Robert Kajanus, who was a decade older than Sibelius and championed his music; he is represented by a lyrical and mood-shifting Suomalainen rapsodia No. 2, Op. 8, from 1886 that owes something to Grieg and the Swede Johan Svendsen but preceded Sibelius pictorial works by some years. One would not want to miss the Scherzo "Felis domestica" by Vaino Raitio, one of the few works in the classical repertory to take up the cat as a subject; one might easily guess what is represented even without knowing the works title. Raitios Idyll of 1938 is more modern in style and must have been a step toward contemporary Finnish music. One may feel that the performances by the Oulu Sinfonia reflect a certain commitment to the home ground, and nothing here is less than listenable. ~ James Manheim