The prominence given to classical music and music education in Finland's cultural life is vividly displayed in this release by the Tapiola Youth Strings, the age of whose members you'd never guess if you weren't informed beforehand. Except for
Paul Hindemith's Trauermusik of 1936, written after the death of Britain's King George V, all the music is Finnish. The opening Suite for strings in F major by
Robert Kajanus predates most of
Sibelius' career (it would have been nice to know its exact date), but the rest of the music clearly reflects his influence. It is interesting to discover how pervasive that influence remained even through the era of high modernism, which is not in evidence here at all. The final Suite for string orchestra of
Uuno Klami (1900-1961) sounds a great deal like
Sibelius in its combination of neo-classic forms such as the second-movement Minuetto with deeply introspective, gloomy music; the Tranquillo movement is anything but tranquil. There is a certain Scandinavian reserve permeating all the music except for the marvelous Trauermusik for viola and orchestra, which resembles a set of impassioned speeches given at a funeral. Hear Pasi Piispanen's group of orchestra songs, especially Dog of the Night (track 15, second part): it would have called forth a grim expressionistic treatment from many another composer of the twentieth century, but Piispanen's measured chill is probably more effective. The young musicians and their conductor, Heikki Pekkarinen, are on top of the music's precision and its brittle edge, never relaxing into even a bit of sentimentality. An impressive and nicely recorded release from Finland's Alba label that will introduce non-Finnish listeners to plenty of music from between the time of
Sibelius and the Finnish orchestral hits of today.