Uuno Klami - Symphonie enfantine Op.17; Hommage a Haendel Op.21

Uuno KLAMI (1900-1961)

Symphonie enfantine, Op. 17

Hommage à Haendel for piano and strings, Op. 21

Timo Koskinen (piano)

Sarja jousiorkesterille (Suite for String Orchestra)

Sarja pienelle orkesterille, Op. 37 (Suite for Small Orchestra)

Tapiola Sinfonietta

Jean-Jacques Kantorow

Of all the Finnish successors to Sibelius, Uuno Klami (1900-61) followed most closely in the master’s footsteps, both in idiom and in finding inspiration in the national epic, the Kalevala. Several discs of his music have already appeared, but this is the premiere recording of these two symphonies. No. 2 is a powerfully sombre wartime work full of engaging melodic and harmonic ideas: the long opening movement has a strong Sibelian dramatic momentum. The more impressionistic Symphonie enfantine dates from 1928 and reflects a year of study in Paris earlier in the decade

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Uuno Klami’s Second Symphony (1945) is very different in character from its predecessor (1938). The First, is optimistic and outgoing in atmosphere; No. 2 is elusive, at times subdued, but with a harder-edged sound in its grander moments, undoubtedly reflecting the terrible events which took place in wartime Finland. Resonances of Sibelius are few, once the opening pages (which seem also fleetingly to look forward several decades to Sallinen) are done with, likewise of the French impressionists so close to the composer’s heart. Rather, it is Tchaikovsky who springs most often to mind, though there is a more generally ‘European’ feel to the music, and the final climax is pure Bax.

Expressively, Klami’s Second Symphony looks back to the nineteenth century, and formally is a little too rhapsodic for its own good. The serious demeanour of the first and third movements suggests that they were the product of some inner imperative, though quite what that was is a mystery. If Klami hoped the piece might prove a compositional ‘fresh start’ for post-war Finnish music, he was to be disappointed (that would only come with the premiere in 1947 of another ‘war’ symphony, Einar Englund’s lean-cut First).