Sibelius wrote his songs originally for voice and piano and in that form they are most often recorded. Some he later orchestrated, while others were arranged by Jussi Jalas (his son-in-law), Ernest Pingourd, Ivan Hellman and Nils-Eric Forgstadt. All produce good results and none of the songs appear over-dressed. On the contrary, they are, as it were, fulfilled: orchestral textures are so strongly implicit that the full range of instruments brings out their coloration and renders them complete.

Soile Isokoski has recorded a number of the songs previously with piano, part of a fine recital on Finlandia in 1989, which was about the time we first learned of the radiant Finnish soprano who five or six years later would receive the international acclaim she deserved. The voice then sounded fuller and was entirely pure in tone: today it is a little more worn but still lovely, firm and ample in range. Above all, she has a rare command of the legato style which makes her singing a delight to the ears when others, more subtle and expressive, may frustrate the full satisfaction their efforts would otherwise offer. There are limitations even so, some of them technical. The Dragonfly (‘En slända’) cannot really be sung without a genuine trill, and Isokoski’s trill is a very sketchy, rudimentary one compared with, say, Elisabeth Söderström’s. Many of these songs tell stories, and Isokoski has not quite the vivid story-teller’s art found in Katarina Karnéus’s singing of Neath the fir trees (‘Under strandens granar’) on Hyperion (7/02) or Von Otter’s But my Bird (‘Men min fågel märks dock icke’) on BIS (6/90). The popular Was it a Dream? (‘Var det en dröm?’), too, sounds well enough until Schwarzkopf is produced for comparison, her voice emerging magically out of the dreamy, murmurous introduction and minting afresh developments that are too nearly predictable and routine in Isokoski.

Yet the recital always gives pleasure, and the challenge of Luonnotar itself is joyfully met. The orchestra play with full appreciation of the richly coloured scores, and since Flagstad in the 1950s there have been few recordings which provide these genuinely enhancing accompaniments as an alternative to the piano.