Sibelius: Belshazzar's Feast Suite, Op. 51

While the beloved ‘Valse triste’ and ‘Scene with Cranes’ from Kuolema are virtually signature tunes for the great Finnish composer, much of Sibelius’s orchestral and theatrical music remains undeservedly less familiar.

From the incidental music for the play Belshazzar’s Feast Sibelius drew four richly scored orientalist movements.

The tone poems Pan and Echo and Night Ride and Sunrise respectively evoke the world of ancient myth and a nocturnal journey towards a Nordic dawn. A lilting waltz dances at the heart of the impressionistic The Dryad, while castanets enliven the light-hearted mood of the Tanz-Intermezzo, Op. 45 No. 2.

Incidental music for the theatre is a genre in which Sibelius’s outstanding abilities as a composer of large canvases for orchestra were combined with his equally well-honed talent for writing concise, sharply characterized portraits of characters or scenes. The present volume of the Sibelius Edition focuses on the orchestral music that he wrote for plays and includes both the complete theatrical scores and the suites that the composer in several cases put together from these.

Volume five in BIS’s acclaimed Sibelius Edition includes the world première recordings of Svanevit Preliminary sketch for No.9 from Svanevit & Canon from Suite No.1 (1927 version) from The Tempest. Other previously unreleased recordings are Valse triste and Scene with Crane from Kuolema.

Among the plays given the Sibelius treatment are works by famous as well as less familiar authors: from Shakespeare, Strindberg and Maeterlinck to the composer’s brother-in-law Arvid Järnefelt. It was for a production of Järnefelt’s drama Kuolema (‘Death’) that Sibelius wrote one of his first scores in 1903 for the theatre – a score which included a Tempo di valse lente that would soon make its triumphant course around the world under the title Valse triste.