Composer: Erkki Melartin
Performer: Hedvig Paulig, Ilmo Ranta, Jan Söderblom
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Toccata
Catalogue: TOCC0416
Release: 2017
Size: 489 MB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
01. Mellan friska blomster, Op. 172, No. 2
5 Songs, Op. 14
02. No. 1, Flickans klagan
03. Törnet, Op. 170, No. 3
6 Songs, Op. 116
04. No. 5, Stum kärlek
05. No. 6, Mitt hjärta behöver
3 Songs, Op. 86
06. No. 3, Under häggarna
8 Songs, Op. 122
07. No. 6, Bön om ro
3 Songs, Op. 96
08. No. 1, Elegie
09. No. 2, Akvarell
4 Tagore Songs, Op. 105
10. No. 1, Skyar
11. No. 2, Sagan om vårt hjärta
12. No. 3, Smärtan
13. No. 4, Allvarsdagen
4 Songs, Op. 117
14. No. 2, Skåda, skåda hur det våras
New Songs, Op. 21
15. No. 2, I skäraste morgongryning
2 Songs, Op. 3
16. No. 1, Marias vaggsång
4 Songs, Op. 151
17. No. 2, Maria, Guds moder
18. No. 3, Stjärnor
19. Mot alla stjärnor (All the stars this night), Op. 73, No. 3
3 Songs, Op. 77
20. No. 2, Det är juni
21. Vallarelåt, Op. 42, No. 1 (Distant Song)
22. Från lägerbålet i öknen (From a campfire in the desert), Op. 78, No. 1
The Finnish composer Erkki Melartin (1875–1937) wrote around 250 art-songs, often grouping settings of different languages and different dates into unrelated and sometimes untitled opus numbers. But what might be a nightmare for the musicologist is a treasure trove for the enthusiast for Nordic song, as this recital of some of the best of Melartin’s Swedish settings will prove, with music that often sounds rather like Sibelius tinged with French Impressionism.
Why did Erkki Melartin, an exact contemporary of Ravel (in birth and death, 1875-1937) never achieve fame beyond the borders of Finland? Was it because he “dared” to be a Finnish composer who didn’t take after his elder compatriot Sibelius in any way? And indeed, his apparently amiable, obliging, open character can’t have lent itself to pushing himself onto centre stage, even though he wrote six symphonies, an opera, a ballet, several symphonic poems, a piano concerto, orchestral suites, chamber music and piano works, as well as a huge number of melodies. Amongst these, several were written in Swedish rather than in Finnish – bear in mind that both are official languages in Sweden – and they are sung here by Hedvig Paulig, accompanied by Ilmo Ranta on the piano, who is joined by violinist Jan Söderblom for the Tagore Songs cycle, based on the words of the 1913 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Rabindranath Tagore. Melartin’s aesthetics occasionally borrow from the stock of Nordic folklore (real or imagined) but also from oriental sources, “impressionism” à la française, late Romanticism and German expressionism: in short, the composer deploys a thousand different languages, rendering any classification of his work very complicated. Which is certainly no reason to give it a miss!