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The Spin Doctor Europadisc's Weekly Column

The Finnish Question: Further into the 20th Century

  13th December 2023

13th December 2023


On this column’s last trip to the Nordic spaces of Finland, we looked at the music of the ‘three Ms’: Erkki Melartin, Leevi Madetoja and Aarre Merikanto. All were born in the last quarter of the 19th century, and the latter two in particular played their part in bringing Finnish music into the 20th century, Madetoja with evident stylistic debts to Sibelius, Merikanto rather more cosmopolitan. The advance into more mainstream European modernism was taken further by three more composers, all born in the early decades of the new century. The first of these, and probably the best-known today, was Uuno Klami (1900–1961), who came from a rural background steeped in folk music traditions. In 1915 he began studies at the Helsinki Music Institute (where his teachers included both Melartin and Madetoja) while simultaneously working as a café and cinema pianist. An early cosmopolitanism was shaped by a stay in Paris (1924–5), where he took lessons from Florent Schmitt.

However, it was another French composer, Maurice Ravel – whom Klami may have met while in Paris – who exerted the strongest influence on the young Finn, becoming ‘an object of lifelong admiration’ (New Grove 2). Other influences from his Parisian stay were Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Honegger and contemporary Spanish music. On a subsequent stay in Vienna (1928–9), probably under the tutelage of Hans Gál, it was not the Second Viennese School but the Viennese visits of Ravel and Bartók that made the strongest impression. The upshot of all this early exposure was that Klami became a masterly orchestrator, as is strikingly obvious in the wonderful Kalevala Suite: this overview of episodes from the Finnish national epic began life as a ballet with reciter (1933), but it was revised into its current form in 1943 with its more static Stravinskian elements largely expunged. There are distinct echoes of Rimsky-Korsakov in the suite’s second movement, ‘The Sprout of Spring’, but what strikes the listener most is the imaginativeness of the scoring and invention, culminating in the machine-like propulsion of the final movement, ‘The Forging of the Sampo’.

Ravelian influences are to the fore in Klami’s Sea Pictures (1930), where both the bassoon solo in the second movement (‘Captain Scrapuchinat’) and the build up in the closing ‘Force 3’ bear the striking imprint of Boléro, and of Ravel’s ‘Spanish’ style more generally. Perhaps the most obvious influence of Stravinsky comes in the single-movement Lemminkäinen’s Adventures on the Island of 1934, its subject familiar from Sibelius’s Lemminkäinen Suite. After a brooding opening, the music gives way to a violin solo that has the clear imprint of Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du soldat, before progressing to more sumptuously-scored ideas whose sparkling instrumentation sometimes anticipates the Hollywood of Korngold and John Williams. As a self-standing work it’s an ideal door-opener to Klami’s rich yet accessible soundworld, but there’s much else to explore, including concertos for violin and cello, a pair of symphonies and the visionary unfinished ballet Pyörteitä (‘Whirls’). All manage to escape the shadow of Sibelius while at the same time avoiding the influence of German formalism.

A grittier modernism is evident in the music of the Swedish-born Einar Englund (1916–1999). The first two of his seven symphonies bear unmistakable references to the atrocities of the Second World War, but following studies in 1949 with Copland at Tanglewood, Englund's style became more catholic. Recalling Klami’s beginnings, Englund worked as a restaurant pianist, but he also composed music for theatre, radio and film. Although he adopted a form of 12-note music, the strongest influences on his style were Stravinsky and Bartók. Most of his symphonies are currently unavailable, although the Second and Fourth feature on a Naxos disc of his orchestral works, coupled with the Piano Concerto no.1. Perhaps the best introduction to his harder-edged style is the recording of his 1954 Violin Concerto by Benjamin Schmid, coupled with that by Klami. For those wanting to explore Finnish concertos beyond Sibelius’s ubiquitous contribution to the genre, it’s an ideal entry-point.

Youngest of this triumvirate of Finnish composers born in the early years of the 20th century is Joonas Kokkonen (1921–1996). Trained in Helsinki, he became an important influence on Finnish musical life and music education. His output included an opera (The Last Temptations of 1975), orchestral works including four symphonies, chamber and instrumental works as well as choral and vocal music. A strong religious strain permeates much of Kokkonen’s oeuvre, which falls into three fairly distinct periods: an early neoclassical phase (1948–57), a 12-note period (1958–66) including his first two string quartets and symphonies, and a final ‘neo-Romantic’ period launched by the Third Symphony of 1967. His music is well represented on the BIS label, and wherever you choose to dip in you will find music of concentrated thoughtfulness, free of the once overpowering influence of Sibelius, vibrantly expressive, and modern in the widest sense. Our own recommendation would be the wonderful (and deservedly popular) Cello Concerto of 1969, spikily urgent, and performed by Torleif Thedeen in a coupling with the Symphony no.4 of two years later. Also well worth investigating is the early Piano Quintet (1953), which comes coupled with the three String Quartets (1958–76).

With these three composers, Finnish music emerged decisively from Sibelius’s shadow into the mid- and late-20th century. On our next visit, we’ll look at the music of one of the country’s most distinctive recent voices, the late Einojuhani Rautavaara, as well as his successors.

Photograph of Uuno Klami

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