Soloists: Jennie Eriksson Nordin, soprano & Karl Söderström, bass

Apart from the seven unearthly poems and several equally delightful symphonic poems, the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius wrote many choral works. Choral music was a common thread throughout his life. He wrote his first choral songs in the 1880s, when he was studying composition at the Helsinki academy of music (later the Sibelius Academy). He wrote his last songs in 1954, at the age of 89.

After his success with his first major choral work, Venematka, in 1893, he went on the following year to compose his potentially most ground-breaking and most frequently performed a capella work, Rakastava. The text is taken from the first volume of Kanteletar, a collection of lyrical, epic folk poems and ballads, a companion work to the national epic of Finland, Kalevala, both by the Finnish author Elias Lönnrot.

To a contemporary listener, the music is light on the ear, but together with Venematka, Rakastava was at the time an important gateway to an entirely new era in Finnish choral music. They were technically difficult and overwhelmingly modern ¬– almost strange. One critic wrote: “Sibelius’s songs are very strange. The first time you hear them you can hardly make them out, although on closer examination you find a great deal of beauty. […] But most beautiful of all is Rakastava, despite some odd and impudent harmonies that you are tempted to assume are misprints.”

Like many of Sibelius’s choral works from the 1890s, Rakastava was originally written for man’s choir. Five years later, in 1898, Sibelius rearranged the piece for mixed choir, and in 1911 he created an instrumental version for string orchestra. The year 1898 was also when five of his works for mixed choir were published in a volume entitled Sävelistö, kaikuja laulustamme (roughly translated as A collection of melodies, echoes of our singing), among them was Rakastava.

Hedvig Ljungar

Soloist: Jennie Eriksson Nordin, soprano.