This week we celebrate Kalevala Day–the great national holiday of Finland Also known as Finnish Culture Day, Kalevala Day. is celebrated on 28 February in honor of Finnish culture and specifically the Finnish national epic and fount of folk poetry, the Kalevala, which has profoundly shaped the Finnish national identity, influencing the country's literature, music, and visual arts–and which was first published on February 28, 1835. Our program will feature major works by several generations of Finnish composers, including of course Jean Sibelius and the more recent Finnish master Einojuhani Rautavaara, both inspired by tales from the Kalevala–and more–this Sunday on Sunday on Blue Lake with Foley Schuler.
The Don Juan figure of Finnish mythology will be given musical expression by Sibelius in the Lemminkäinen Suite, and we'll hear the same composer's Kyllikki (a piano quite named for a maiden who appears in the epic—and one of two performances on the show featuring the great Glenn Gould,) Our final hour will feature two works by Einojuhani Rautavaara, his Concerto for Birds and Orchestra, Cantus Arcticus (indeed based on his field recordings of bird sounds he made near the Arctic Circle) as well as his hunting chamber opera for children's chorus, Marjatta, The Lowly Maid, shoes story comes from the final section of the Kalavala and depicts a uniquely Finnish variant of the story of the virgin birth.
You can hear Sunday on Blue Lake with Foley Schuler every Sunday morning from 9 until noon on Blue Lake Public Radio.
