Finnish mythology brought to life in Lahti as the Sibelius Festival opens

For 25 years the annual Sibelius Festival in Lahti has presented the music of Sibelius and no-one but Sibelius. The 26th festival, however, is different. New Artistic Director, Hannu Lintu, has redesigned the festival with a three-year package which puts Sibelius in context. While the focus remains on the Sinfonia Lahti and on Sibelius, several other composers are represented in each year’s festival. In 2025 these are Mahler, Tchaikovsky, Wagner and Grieg.

The opening concert began with Mahler’s Totenfeier. Sibelius and Mahler met only once, in 1907 in Helsinki. On that occasion they famously discussed their different views of the symphony. Sibelius said that he admired its severity of form and the logic connecting motifs. Mahler’s opinion was that the symphony must be like the world. It must embrace everything.

Both Totenfeier and Kullervo were composed long before that meeting: Totenfeier dates from 1888. With only a little revision it became the first movement of Mahler’s world-embracing Second Symphony, but it works perfectly well in its original form as a free-standing tone poem. The title means Funeral Rites but it is a meditation on death rather than music for the funeral of a particular person. Right from the opening tremolos on lower strings, Lintu managed the tension to create a satisfying whole and the Sinfonia Lahti rose to its challenges magnificently. The piece is not entirely sombre: there was relief from its intensity with some rather beautiful, even delicate, passages, the climaxes stunning.

Kullervo was premiered in 1892. It is an ambitious early work, predating all his symphonies, and remained his longest single composition. It has five movements, of which three are instrumental and two require a choir of male voices as well as soprano and baritone soloists. Sibelius depicts the story of the Kullervo, taken from the Kalevala, the Finnish national epic which was compiled from folk sources and only published in 1835. It became a main source of inspiration for Sibelius throughout his life.

Hearing Kullervo after the Mahler brought home how inventive and different from the mainstream Germanic tradition Sibelius’ music is, even in such an early work. The combination of an orchestra steeped in his music, a Finnish choir, the fine acoustics of the Sibelius Hall and the committed conducting of Lintu made for a glorious performance. The first movement set the scene, plunging us into the work of Finnish mythology and establishing many key motifs. The story begins in earnest with Kullervo’s troubled childhood in Kullervo’s Youth. The orchestra brought out Sibelius’ remarkable ability to tell a story though music. The tale reached its climax with the dramatic third movement Kullervo and his Sister, the YL Male Voice Choir conveying the text magnificently. 

At first I was troubled by Johanna Rusanen’s somewhat grating soprano in her interjections, but in her long narration of her life story, the rough edges were replaced by intense lyrical singing with a hint of timeless archaic style. Davóne Tines was less successful; his voice overwhelmed by the loud, violent stabbing chords that accompanied his realisation that the woman he had seduced was in fact his sister. The narrative continued in purely orchestral form in Kullervo Goes to War. The choir returned in Kullervo’s Death to tell of the story of the hero’s suicide when he returns to the location of his encounter with his sister. The orchestral playing was first rate throughout, with Lintu managing to squeeze every last drop of feeling out of their performance. A Finnish friend asked me after the performance whether I had felt the Finnish forests. I certainly had.