Listening to these two works by Aulis Sallinen is a bit like looking at two different photographs of the composer: the face is undeniably the same but not the perspective. Songs of Life and Death (1993-4) arose, rather by mischance, from a failed effort to compose a Requiem on verses by Lassi Nummi. Although title and outward form suggest Mahlerian associations, the conservative musical language rather brings Verdi to mind, and in a very real sense this cycle is a twentieth-century equivalent of the latter's Requiem: both are symphonic in construction and operatic in idiom, composed from spiritual rather than religious standpoints, and make use of secular elements. There are differences, of course, not least in scale and conception, which serve to underline a similarity of purpose and stature relative to their epochs. And while Sallinen's songs are also very much songs of life, death is not here perceived as a grim or tragic end, and this imparts to the whole a peculiarly late twentieth-century aspect. Here at last is the choral-and-orchestral masterpiece Sibelius should have written, Finnish to the core yet international in appeal. It is, I believe, one of the very finest compositions Sallinen has yet produced.
Where in the Songs of Life and Death voices are the principal element, in the Iron Age Suite (1978-82) the focus is rather on the orchestra, the chorus being an important but more colouristic extra. The suite originated in music written for a series of prize-winning Finnish TV documentaries and in it the more familiar Sallinen of the symphonies and early operas is on display. Both works receive terrific performances and I can think of no one better in this repertoire than Sallinen's long-standing champion Okko Kamu, underused by a recording industry often in favour of younger, less talented rivals. Very strongly recommended.'