Although everyone knows the Karelia Suite and the Overture, which Sibelius published separately as his Op. 10, no one will have heard the complete score. This has lain undisturbed since it was first performed in November 1893 at “a Festivity and Lottery in aid of education in the province of Viipuri”. On that occasion Sibelius’s music extended to eight tableaux which portrayed various episodes in Karelian history from the thirteenth century onwards. In his authoritative note, a model of its kind, Fabian Dahlstrom elucidates the background to the whole event.
The original score of the Karelia music was discovered in the conductor, Kajanus’s library after his death in 1933 and his widow returned it to Sibelius three years later. In the 1940s he destroyed the score, sparing only the overture, the movements familiar from the suite and the first number, “A Karelian Home – News of War”. Fortunately for posterity, a set of orchestral parts came to light, albeit incomplete, and were put into shape by Kalevi Kuoso. It was these that the composer Kalevi Aho used in preparing the edition on which this recording is based. (In another part of the booklet Aho goes into some detail in describing the exact nature and extent of his contribution.) In all there are some 40 minutes of music, over half of which is new. Erik Tawaststjerna wrote at some length about the Karelia music in his biographical study to which I would refer readers (Vol. 1; Faber: 1976). Those familiar with the “Ballade” from the Op. 11 Suite will no doubt be slightly disconcerted to hear the familiar cor anglais melody taken by a baritone and will find the piece too long in its original form. The opening of the fifth Tableau, “Pontus de la Gardie at the gates of Kakisalmi [Kexholm Castle] in 1580”, is highly effective and leads into the famous “Alla marcia”. Tawaststjerna reminds us that already at the first performance of the eight-movement concert version of the score later the same month Sibelius was having second thoughts about the piece. Be that as it may, it is fascinating to hear what it is like, and what Sibelius was prepared to lose. Listening to this reaffirms and illumines (as do the first versions of the Violin Concerto and the 1915 version of the Fifth Symphony) both the sureness of his artistic judgement and the vitality of his creative imagination. Although it does not contain music as revelatory as Everyman or The Wood Nymph – let alone Scaramouche – it is of enormous interest.
Sibelius’s incidental music to Kuolema, the play by his brother-in-law, Arvid Jarnefelt, dates from 1903. The most familiar music from it is the Valse triste, which Sibelius revised the following year, adding flute, clarinet, horns and timpani and making it altogether more sophisticated harmonically and melodically. The second movement, “Paavali’s Song” is an inspired piece, and so for that matter are the third and fourth scenes which Sibelius subsequently conflated (and rescored) in the “Scene with cranes”. The bird-cries sit less comfortably here on the strings. The other two movements are not as inspired but are far from negligible. The familiar revised Valse triste finishes a record which will be of great interest to Sibelians. As always Osmo Vanska and his Lahti players prove reliable and responsive guides in this atmospheric music and, one or two exaggerated and affected pianopianissimos apart, I cannot imagine their performances being improved on. Wide-ranging and expertly balanced recorded sound.'