Leiviskä: Orchestral Works, Vol. 1

Helvi Leiviskä (1902-82), born some 50 years before Finland’s best-known female composer, Kaija Saariaho, has recently been emerging from the shadows. Her characterful and brilliantly orchestrated symphonies in particular have been winning her new fans. Here we have the premiere recording of Symphony No. 2, coupled with music from a landmark film. But we start with the work that has generally been acknowledged as her best-known. Sinfonia brevis (1962), although a relatively late work, recalls Leiviskä’s studies in Vienna in the late 1920s. Its uncharacteristically sober instrumental palette—burnished browns rather than her usual bright and glittering colors—suggests both its serious intent in demonstrating Leiviskä’s compositional craft, and the influence of Brahms. Yet it ends with an effective roof-raising climax, stirringly fulfilled by the Lahti Symphony Orchestra conducted by Dalia Stasevska. Much more typical of Leiviskä’s style are the Orchestral Suite No. 2, using music from her 1937 film score Juha, and Symphony No. 2, composed in 1954. Both works are far more deft and scintillating in their use of instrumental color, with touches here and there of Sibelius and Scriabin. While the Symphony appears the most consistently inspired of the two works with its airy fantasy and wraith-like finale, the Suite has an equally characteristic if quite different end with its darkly brooding “Epilogi.” Both are compellingly performed by Stasevska with her Finnish musicians.