Finlandia

On 18 April 1921 Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra returned to Victor’s studio in Camden, New Jersey. Their fourth take of Finlandia became the issued record. Victor marked the other three takes for destruction.

At Helsinki’s Swedish Theatre in November 1899, actors presented scenes from Finland’s history to raise money for journalists. Russian censorship hung over the celebrations. Sibelius’s music ended with Finland Awakens, the piece he later revised into Finlandia.

The young Heikki Klemetti was in the audience at the Swedish Theatre in 1899. He later wrote that “those grand, gloomy themes … rolled across the tableau depicting the horrors of the ‘Great Hate’”.

The hymn is in A♭ major, in long phrases that follow the short fanfares. Sibelius wrote it for orchestra alone. The Finnish words came in 1940, when V. A. Koskenniemi wrote a text for it.

In the score the woodwinds introduce the hymn and the strings continue it. Leopold Stokowski, who conducts here, suggested the tune as a national anthem for the whole world.

In the faster closing passage the brass fanfares return around the hymn. The hymn continues in broad note values against the quicker figures, and both lead to the final orchestral chords.

In Helsinki the piece was first known as Finland, The Awakening of Finland and Finale, and on a European tour as Vaterland and La Patrie. Axel Carpelan suggested Finlandia in November 1900, for the piano arrangement.