SIBELIUS: COMPLETE SONGS - ASHKENAZY, SODERSTROM, KRAUSE, BONELL, GAGE (4 CDS)

Sibelius composed almost a hundred songs, most of them to Swedish texts. The earliest set, Opus 13, dates from the early 1890s, and the last, the Six Runeberg settings, op.90, comes from the darkest years of the First World War when he was struggling with the definitive version of the Fifth Symphony. True, there are two other songs the delightful settings of Bertel Gripenberg s Narciss (1918) and of Hjalmar Procopé s Små flickorna (Young girls, 1920), but to all intents and purposes, Sibelius s contribution to the romans repertoire ends well before his last four major works, the Sixth and Seventh Symphonies, Tapiola and The Tempest. The romans, incidentally, is the Swedish equivalent of the German Lied or the French mélodie, and it's foundations were laid early in the nineteenth century by such composers as Geijer, Almqvist and Lindblad.

Tom Krause, baritone

Irwin Gage, piano

Elisabeth Soderstrom, soprano

Vladimir Ashkenazy, piano

- Disc 1 -