Following up the first two instalments of THE SIBELIUS EDITION, this third volume offers the complete music for voice and orchestra, including orchestral songs, cantatas, melodramas and the composer’s one opera – The Maiden in the Tower. Opening the programme is one of Sibelius’s greatest works, Kullervo. This is his first work of symphonic proportions, and was a huge success at its première in 1892, only to be withdrawn soon after by the young composer. Here, for the first time, Sibelius entered the mythological realm of Kalevala, Finland’s national epos, a world which he would return to on numerous occasions – for instance in works such as Luonnotar, A Song for Lemminkäinen and The Origin of Fire, all included in this collection. Another theme which runs through Sibelius’s output was the yearning for national independence, a yearning which was fulfilled in 1917. The Fool’s Song of the Spider, Sandels, Have You Courage? and The Captive Queen are only some of the included works with a more or less overt political message. As with the previous instalments, several of the works are given here in more than one version, mirroring the composer’s tendency to return to a score even after publication, as well as his willingness, in certain cases, to adapt a work to varying performance conditions. Also included are the composer’s earliest surviving attempts at writing for choir and orchestra: two chorales from his student years. Among the recordings, three have not been previously released, and one of these – the 1912 version of Have You Courage? – is a world première. Assembled in chronological order, the remaining recordings have been collected from a number of earlier discs, released to great critical acclaim. To mention but a few, Osmo Vänskä’s Kullervo has been described as ‘a first-class account, dramatic and powerfully atmospheric’ in Gramophone while the performances of the orchestral songs with Jorma Hynninnen and MariAnne Häggander supported by Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra received a Grand Prix du Disque at the time of their original release. BIS
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