Occasional works by composers famous in other genres are often problematic, largely because the nature of such commissions forces a public manner on the creator that he (or she) might otherwise not have adopted. Political considerations drew from Shostakovich some of his emptiest utterances (for example The Song of the Forests), though Hyperion's issue of two occasional cantatas by Beethoven (4/97) revealed his to be far stronger than one had imagined.
Sibelius composed three such cantatas in the 1890s, two for graduation ceremonies of Helsinki University (in 1894 and 1897) and one marking Tsar Nicholas II's coronation in 1896. Given Sibelius's nationalist (albeit musical) stance, one can imagine the Coronation Cantata to have been a somewhat vicarious task that did not fully engage him. This would account for the work's failure at its premiere rather than the oft-quoted story of a drunken tuba player (the score has no tuba part). Heard now, it seems a lacklustre piece from the composer of Kullervo and Lemminkainen, unlike the 'Conferment' Cantata of 1894 which, while overlong, impressed me as the work of a gifted apprentice failing to fulfil his potential.
The performances are nicely prepared but reverential to the point almost of gutlessness in the cantatas. Even Finlandia does not really catch fire, unlike Jarvi's listed above (which overlays the choral parts of the central hymn - Segerstam and Ondine missed a trick here), and the 1919 Academic March - in a cut version - sounds rather soggy. Ondine has performed a most valuable service in issuing these pieces, but I would hate for someone to encounter Sibelius for the first time through this disc: there are far better works and more exciting performances to be heard.'