Most of the music on this disc has never been recorded before, and it presents a Sibelius different from the one most listeners are used to, at least outside Finland. Some of these works were originally written for male choir, while others were arranged for the ancestor of the choir that performs on this recording, the YL Male Voice Choir of the University of Helsinki. The music, arising during an era in which Finland was in the middle of a long process of throwing off Russian control, runs on a continuum from Wagner-like ...
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Most of the music on this disc has never been recorded before, and it presents a Sibelius different from the one most listeners are used to, at least outside Finland. Some of these works were originally written for male choir, while others were arranged for the ancestor of the choir that performs on this recording, the YL Male Voice Choir of the University of Helsinki. The music, arising during an era in which Finland was in the middle of a long process of throwing off Russian control, runs on a continuum from Wagner-like interest in the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala, to out-and-out patriotic songs like the "Jääkärien Marssi, Op. 91a." Several of the pieces are semi-dramatic cantatas with big, unsubtle effects quite unlike the elaborate logic of the later Sibelius orchestral music, but there are also links in orchestration and thematic material to Sibelius' earlier instrumental music; sample track 4, Vapautettu Kuningatar, for instance, which is of a piece stylistically with much of the Symphony...
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Add this copy of Origin of Fire to cart. $21.80, new condition, Sold by Importcds rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Sunrise, FL, UNITED STATES, published 2007 by BIS.
