Leevi Madetoja - Orchestral Works Vol. 5 (Arvo Volmer)

Information

Composer: Leevi Madetoja

• (01) Kullervo Overture, Op. 15
• (02) Väinämöinen Sows the Wilderness, Op. 46
• (03) Little Suite, Op. 12
• (06) Autumn, Op. 68
• (12) Okon Fuoko Suite II (compiled by Arvo Volmer from Op. 58)

Tuomas Katajala, tenor (2)
Kirsi Tiihonen, soprano (6-11)
Oulu Symphony Orchestra
Arvo Volmer, conductor

Date: 2005
Label: Alba Records

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Review

A long wait, but volume five of Volmer’s Madetoja survey appears – and delights

Finlandia, Chandos and Alba in the 1990s helped make Madetoja’s music familiar. One of the early successes was the splendid short suite from his pantomime-ballet Okon Fuoko and a primary attraction of this new issue is Arvo Volmer’s further eight-movement extract (he has recorded the work in full for Alba). Running to just over 21 minutes, this Second Suite is pure Madetoja, a pithy, characterful work full of attractive music.

So, too, is the vocal suite Autumn (1930, orchestrated 1940), settings of his wife’s poems. The six songs are thematically linked but arranged as irregular pairs: Nos 1 (‘Autumn’) and 4 (‘Goodnight’), 2 (‘Farewell’) and 6 (‘O’er the waves eternal’), and 3 (‘You thought I was watching you’) and 5 (‘Oh, blue bird’). There is some delightful vocal writing here, which soprano Kirsi Tiihonen relishes, and in Väinämöinen Sows the Wilderness, his atmospheric 1919 fantasia based on part of Canto 2 of the Kalevala. There is more than a touch of Luonnotar about this cantata for soprano or tenor (here the firm-voiced Tuomas Katajala), not least in its expressive restraint.

The Kullervo Overture and Little Suite are earlier, pre-Great War pieces. The suite is almost light music but in Kullervo one can hear how the apprentice composer is gradually sucked into Sibelius’s orbit, so that by its powerful coda one wonders whether Madetoja has assimilated the style or the style has assimilated the composer. The Oulu SO respond enthusiastically to what must still be largely unfamiliar territory even to them and their playing is matched by very good sound.

-- Guy Rickards, Gramophone

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Leevi Madetoja (17 February 1887, Oulu – 6 October 1947, Helsinki) was a Finnish composer, music critic, conductor, and teacher. He is generally considered to be among the most significant Finnish composers to emerge after Jean Sibelius, with whom he studied. The core of Madetoja's oeuvre consists of a set of three symphonies, two operas, an Elegia for strings, the suite The Garden of Death for solo piano, and the Japanisme ballet-pantomime Okon Fuoko. Acclaimed during his lifetime, Madetoja is today seldom heard outside the Nordic countries, although his music has in recent decades enjoyed a renaissance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leevi_Madetoja

***

Arvo Volmer (born November 4, 1962 in Tallinn) is an Estonian conductor. Volmer was principal conductor of the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra from 1993 to 2001. From 2004 to 2013 he was Chief Conductor and Music Director of the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. Since September 2014 he has been the Chief Conductor of the Orchestra Haydn di Bolzano e Trento. Volmer has also been guest conductor of many orchestras, especially in Scandinavia. Among his recordings are the complete orchestral works of Leevi Madetoja and the complete symphonies of Eduard Tubin and Jean Sibelius.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arvo_Volmer
https://www.arvovolmer.com/

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

FLAC, tracks

Links in comment

Enjoy!