• Sibelius’s songs, each compressed into a matter of a few minutes, occupy a landscape as singular and potent as his symphonies. Mostly written for voice and piano to Swedish texts, they are a key part of the Finnish composer’s repertoire: he wrote more than 100. In Jean Sibelius: Orchestral Songs (Lawo), the Norwegian mezzo-soprano Marianne Beate Kielland and the Norwegian Radio Orchestra, conducted by Petr Popelka, have brought together 18 songs in orchestral versions by, among others, Sibelius’s contemporary, Simon Parmet; his son-in-law, the Finnish conductor Jussi Jalas; and the British composer Colin Matthews.
