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Sibelius - Lemminkainen Suite, Spring Song, Suite from ‘Belshazzar’s Feast’ | Chandos CHAN20136

Sibelius - Lemminkainen Suite, Spring Song, Suite from ‘Belshazzar’s Feast’

£13.88

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Label: Chandos

Cat No: CHAN20136

Barcode: 0095115213629

Format: CD

Number of Discs: 1

Genre: Orchestral

Release Date: 3rd June 2019

Gramophone Editor's Choice

Contents

Artists

BBC Symphony Orchestra

Conductor

Sakari Oramo

Works

Sibelius, Jean

Belshazzar's Feast: Suite, op.51
Lemminkainen Suite, op.22
Spring Song, op.16

Artists

BBC Symphony Orchestra

Conductor

Sakari Oramo

About

Chief Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra since 2013, Sakari Oramo has a special affinity with the music of his compatriot the Finnish composer Sibelius, which this recording admirably demonstrates.

Sibelius’s ever-popular Lemminkäinen Suite is complemented here with the early Spring Song and the lesser-known Suite from Belshazzar’s Feast.

Sibelius composed the Lemminkäinen Suite (also called the Four Legends, or Four Legends from the Kalevala), op.22 in the 1890s. Drawing on material originally conceived for a mythological opera, Veneen luominen (The Building of the Boat), the suite focuses on the character Lemminkäinen from the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala.

In 1906 Sibelius composed ten numbers of incidental music for the play Belshazzar’s Feast (by Hjalmar Procopé), which was first performed in the Swedish Theatre in Helsinki in November of that year, the composer conducting. The following year, Sibelius extracted four of the movements to form the more widely known orchestral suite that we hear in this recording.

Reviews

Sakari Oramo has recorded precious little Sibelius since his time in Birmingham but don’t think the repertoire on this disc constitutes anything less than a mighty statement. We have Sibelius in three different but vital modes – linguistic cornerstones, even – on which the BBC Symphony’s chief conductor brings deep insights to bear. ... Having just chosen my preferred recording of the [Lemminkäinen] suite for BBC Radio 3’s Building a Library (Paavo Järvi), there is no doubting this would have been a serious contender and at the very least an ‘also recommended’.  Andrew Mellor
Gramophone July 2019

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