TOIVO KUULA (1883-1918): South Ostrobothnian Suites No. 1, Op. 9 and No. 2, Op. 20, Prelude and Fugue, Op. 10, Festive March, Op. 13.

Description: Main attraction here are the 53 minutes which make up the two suites which date from 1906-09 and 1912-13 respectively. Each has five movements with three being based on folk tunes and two not. The “two not” of the first suite are not as Sibelian as you might think, given that Kuula was studying with the Finnish master beginning in the autumn of 1907 (in fact, one of them was written in Italy under the supervision of Marco Enrico Bossi); the two of the second suite are powerful evocations of nature fully au courant with Debussy’s Impressionism and the last one, The Will-o’-the-Wisp, is pretty much a self-contained 12-minute tone poem. Turku Philharmonic Orchestra; Leif Segerstam.