Jean Sibelius (1865 - 1957)
Karelia Suite
Intermezzo - moderato
Ballade - tempo di minuetto
Alla marcia - moderato

In 1892, the young Sibelius was married and the couple went for a honeymoon in the Finnish province of Karelia. This area on the Russian border, with its landscape of forest and lakes, is setting to many incidents in the Finnish national cycle of myths and legends known as the Kalevala. The combined influence of legend and landscape had a deep influence on Sibelius; this rapidly bore fruit in a series of compositions which established his status as a major national composer.

At this time Finland was a semi-autonomous province of Russia, but the Tsar and his government were having a hard time keeping the lid on a rising tide of nationalist feeling.

The following year (1893) Sibelius was asked to provide music for a historical pageant commemorating various incidents in Finland's history. From the set of eight or so incidental pieces he wrote, he subsequently extracted three to form a suite for concert performance.

The three movements are straightforward in design and appeal. The first, although titled Intermezzo is clearly a march, which gradually swells to a climax and then fades away; the second is a gentle reflective movement for strings and woodwind alone; and the third is an energetic march with two themes, propelled by a brisk dotted rhythm that keeps the energy levels high right to the end.