The great Finnish composer Jean Sibelius composed a great number of symphonic poems (ie one-movement symphonic works), often with a programmatic content, depicting Finnish sagas or fairy tales: Finlandia, The Swan of Tuonela, En Saga and many others.

This is a complete recording of these immensely enjoyable and popular works by the great Russian conductor Vasilli Sinaisky and the Moscow State Symphonic Orchestra.

Nowhere in music are the landscape, myths, legends and politics of a composer’s country so inextricably hard-wired into his sound world as in the music of Jean Sibelius (1865-1957). The vast pine forests, lakes and rivers of Finland, the midnight sun, the endless winter nights, the penetrating cold, and the brief warm summers combine, along with the epic national poem The Kalevala, to provide a rich vein for Sibelius to exploit in his unique Symphonic Poems and his seven symphonies.

From the early En Saga of 1891, via Finlandia to the vast, shattering experience of Tapiola of 1926, his unique musical voice became the voice of the new Finnish nation emerging from centuries of domination by Sweden and Russia.

This 3 CD set contains all the symphonic poems, including The Four Legends (The Swan of Tuonela is the second of these), the famous Finlandia, and the masterful Pohjola’s Daughter, the mysterious Oceanides and Luonnotar, and the final last symphonic work Tapiola. After completing this work, Sibelius lived another 31 years in musical silence, completing and destroying his 8th Symphony.

Recordings made in 1991.