Sibelius: Belshazzar's Feast Suite, Op. 51

Offered a grant in 1930 to broaden international interest in Finnish music through recordings made in London, Jean Sibelius did not hesitate in his choice of a conductor, writing that “there are none who have gone deeper and given [my symphonies] more feeling and beauty than Robert Kajanus”. These thrilling recordings remain a critical reference today, with Kajanus seen as “Sibelius’s most eloquent and perceptive champion… listening to the Second Symphony one senses the extraordinary feeling Kajanus had for the organic nature of Sibelius’s symphonic thought” (The Gramophone). Including the exotic and enticing Belshazzar’s Feast and patriotic Karelia suites, this is the second of three volumes containing Robert Kajanus’s complete Sibelius recordings.

Mark Obert-Thorn, producer and audio restoration engineer

While the beloved ‘Valse triste’ and ‘Scene with Cranes’ from Kuolema are virtually signature tunes for the great Finnish composer, much of Sibelius’s orchestral and theatrical music remains undeservedly less familiar.

From the incidental music for the play Belshazzar’s Feast Sibelius drew four richly scored orientalist movements.

The tone poems Pan and Echo and Night Ride and Sunrise respectively evoke the world of ancient myth and a nocturnal journey towards a Nordic dawn. A lilting waltz dances at the heart of the impressionistic The Dryad, while castanets enliven the light-hearted mood of the Tanz-Intermezzo, Op. 45 No. 2.

The Finnish composer Jean Sibelius is famous mostly for his orchestral music. His seven symphonies and his violin concerto are known throughout the world. Much less familiar to the listeners is his piano music, although he composed well over one hundred pieces for the piano. Even less well-known are the more than 20 original piano arrangements of Sibelius's orchestral works. It was not until the 1980s that pianists noticed that many of these arrangements are actually more suitable for large concert halls than the original piano works, which are often modest in scope and technical demands. For his first recording for Hänssler Classic, the young Finnish virtuoso Henri Sigfridsson has selected a program of some of Sibelius' own arrangements of his most popular works - including Finlandia, Valse triste and the Karelia Suite.

Although less well-known than his orchestral works, his output for the piano is extensive, and we can now present the second instalment of music for solo piano in the BIS Sibelius Edition. The music on this second set was written between 1905 and 1931, and includes the Three Sonatinas, widely seen as some of Sibelius’s finest piano works, as well as the five pieces from the composer’s Op.75, commonly known as ‘The Trees’. Among the several world première recordings in this collection we find an Adagio written for his wife Aino’s birthday in 1931, Sibelius’s last composition for piano – and his only one for piano four-hands. Included are also a number of Sibelius’ own transcriptions, mainly of music he had composed for stage performances of plays such as Pelléas et Mélisande. A special case in this category is the four minute long reworking for the piano of an original bell melody written in 1912 for Helsinki’s newly built Kallio Church.

Incidental music for the theatre is a genre in which Sibelius’s outstanding abilities as a composer of large canvases for orchestra were combined with his equally well-honed talent for writing concise, sharply characterized portraits of characters or scenes. The present volume of the Sibelius Edition focuses on the orchestral music that he wrote for plays and includes both the complete theatrical scores and the suites that the composer in several cases put together from these.

Volume five in BIS’s acclaimed Sibelius Edition includes the world première recordings of Svanevit Preliminary sketch for No.9 from Svanevit & Canon from Suite No.1 (1927 version) from The Tempest. Other previously unreleased recordings are Valse triste and Scene with Crane from Kuolema.

Among the plays given the Sibelius treatment are works by famous as well as less familiar authors: from Shakespeare, Strindberg and Maeterlinck to the composer’s brother-in-law Arvid Järnefelt. It was for a production of Järnefelt’s drama Kuolema (‘Death’) that Sibelius wrote one of his first scores in 1903 for the theatre – a score which included a Tempo di valse lente that would soon make its triumphant course around the world under the title Valse triste.