Music from Finland brings our short survey of Nordic music over the past few weeks to a close. For most people, the country’s reputation for classical music is probably dominated by the name of Jean Sibelius (1865–1957), so this blog will try and turn the spotlight on works by other composers deserving of air-time.

We start with music by a composer born some sixty years before Sibelius, namely Fredrik Pacius (1809–1891). Regarded as the father of Finnish music, Pacius was the composer of the first Finnish opera, The Hunt of King Charles, which had its premiere in Helsinki in 1852. At that time the language of the theatre and the opera house was Swedish, and accordingly the work has a Swedish text, although the opera is often performed in a Finnish translation. Continue reading and listening at blog.naxos.com