Hyperion Records

The Opus 37 set includes two Runeberg settings: Den första kyssen (‘The First Kiss’) and Flickan kom ifrån sin älsklings möte (‘The girl returns from meeting her lover’), sometimes known as ‘The Tryst’. As usual when Sibelius is setting Runeberg, the musical language is direct and concentrates on line with a generally functional piano accompaniment providing harmonic support. Den första kyssen was written for Ida Ekman, the mother of his first biographer, Karl Ekman, and an eloquent interpreter of his songs. (It was she who, accompanied by Hanslick, sang one of his songs to Brahms in 1895.) Den första kyssen, incidentally, comes from 1900, not 1898 as listed in Ekman, Solanterä and the earlier editions of my own Master Musicians monograph. Lasse liten (‘Little Lasse’) is from 1902, as is Soluppgång (‘Sunrise’) – again, recent evidence has disproved the previously accepted dating. In May 1902, Sibelius spoke of his working on Tor Hedberg’s Soluppgång, which he described as ‘a slight but powerfully atmospheric poem’. And so indeed it is, and Sibelius’s setting evokes its mood with great finesse. Lasse liten has been criticised for its low-lying accompaniment, almost exclusively in the bass clef. Yet, oddly enough, its subtle rhythm, so completely attuned to the speech rhythm of Topelius’s verse, strikes a note of conviction, and the dark colours evoked convey an idea of the big wide world with all its attendant dangers that lurks outside the mother’s sheltering embrace.

from notes by Robert Layton © 2002