If you're looking for a major novelty, here is one. The music on this recording is entirely unlike that found by other boy choirs. All of it is natively Finnish, with only the final texted version of Sibelius' "Finlandia" theme being at all familiar to non-Finns. Many of the selections are settings of passages from Finnish epic poetry (they are mostly by contemporary composers), giving drones, antiphonal effects, and other dramatic devices to the youthful choristers. The stuff of "Veransulkusanat" (A Blood-Stanching Charm) ought to clear the palate of any residual sweetness left over from listening to English cathedral choirs. The booklet notes, in Finnish and English (as are the texts of the compositions), provide lots of information about the individual composers but little overall background information (national epics haven't spawned music like this in other countries, and it would be interesting to know more about the unusual school of composition represented here). Most of the music is unaccompanied, with just a few pieces backed by piano or a small percussion group, and it's full of strange and wondrous effects. Check out the six-section "Oravan laulu" (The Squirrel) by
Heikki Liimola. Its opening stanza (heard in track 15) recurs in new guises in two of the later sections; hear the odd texture of track 17 -- not exactly tone clusters but more of a tone cloud. The talent of the singers displayed in passages like this one is remarkable testimony to the music-educational system of a country whose international influence in the field of concert music is way out of proportion to its modest population. The music doesn't all deal in blood and guts; the middle of the program contains a sequence of Finnish folk songs that will please any lover of children's choir music. But first and foremost, at least from the point of view of the non-Finnish listener, the chief attraction of the disc will be the surprises contained therein.