Armas JARNEFELT (1869-1958)
Orchestral Works
Symphonic Fantasy (1895) [20:51]
Suite in E flat major (1897) [21:40]
Serenade (1893) [29:59]
Berceuse for violin and orchestra (1904) [340]
Lahti Symphony Orchestra/Jaakko Kuusisto (violin)
rec. May, August 2008, Sibelius Hall, Lahti, Finland. DDD
BIS BIS-CD-1753 [77:07] 
The Järnefelt children were a talented lot. Eero was a painter, Arvid an author
and Armas a composer. Aino married Jean Sibelius. It was Sibelius’s music
that put Järnefelt’s works in the shade – as it did with all the other Finnish
composers for his own and several Finnish generations to follow.
As for influences on Järnefelt’s music you do not need desperately sensitive
antennae. Sibelius is there, as are the other leading denizens of the romantic
genre: Wagner, Tchaikovsky, Franck and Massenet. The Symphonic Fantasy
is a smooth piece of high-flown romantic writing, brooding, discursive
and not desperately taut. Apart from the understandable Sibelian echoes these
play in wan half-lights throughout this 21 minute continuous piece. Franck’s
still terribly under-rated Psyché is also evoked and it is this voice
that irradiates the final pages. Two years later came the five movement Suite
in E flat major. It is a serene piece having its mood-set in common with
the Massenet suites, the Brahms serenades and the lighter more relaxed pages
of Sibelius’s early theatre music. The moonlit writing for strings in the
first two movements is Dvorákian. Mendelssohn haunts the Presto. The finale
suffers from little bouts of bombast. The Serenade is in six
movements. It offers a pleasant listen with a dab of Karelia here,
a smidgin of Glazunov there, a tear-stain of sentimentality, a glinting speckle
of Tchaikovskian harp, a softened sob, a touching wistful sigh, a hint of
charming street-life and a romping country dance. If you would like more of
the pleasing and undemanding fare offered by Glazunov’s suites, then you know
that Järnefelt will be there for you. The final Berceuse is
gently touching with a lightly Slavonic yearning. One can hear in this work
the romantic vein from which Sibelius mined the peaceful charms of the two
Serenades for violin and orchestra. The helpful liner-note is by Kimmo Korhonen.
The recording quality is excellent done with typically unglamorous Bis fidelity.
This is a generous slice of Järnefelt’s orchestral music. I am pleased to
welcome its low key charms and melancholy smiles. If you are already captivated
by Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll, the Glazunov ballet music (Raymonda
and Les Ruses d’Amour), the Tchaikovsky genre pieces and the Massenet
character suites then this is for you.
Rob Barnett
A generous slice of Järnefelt’s orchestral music. You will be pleased to welcome its low key charms and melancholy smiles.