First performed in 1860, Zacharias Topelius’s play The Princess of Cyprus, with Frederik Pacius’s incidental music, was part of a first generation of Kalevala-inspired works (the storyline in this case being somewhat opportunistically transplanted to the Mediterranean) that in retrospect seems like a pale forerunner of Sibelius’s tone poems and Akseli Gallen-Kallela’s paintings.

Pacius’s music is charming, inoffensive stuff, highly derivative of Weber. The 10 musical numbers are a mixture of songs, melodrama and choruses (including a mildly mocking one addressed to Lemminkainen), here sensibly linked by an abridged narration (in Swedish). As a document of the early history of Finnish music history, as a fund of counter-illustrations to the genius of Sibelius, or simply as pleasant wallpaper music, this CD is useful to have, especially given the decent (though not flawless) playing, fine recording and helpful documentation.