international

Ernst Mielck, who died at the age of only 21, is regarded as one of the most dazzling prodigies in the history of Finnish music. He was a curious figure, an outsider who nevertheless managed to make waves before his untimely death.

It is finally time for Erkki Melartin to emerge from “the shadow of Sibelius”, nearly 63 years after his death. Is Melartin a symphonic composer of international stature or merely one of those “harlots and their pimps”, as Gustav Mahler termed the “national geniuses” in music?

Composer and academician Joonas Kokkonen (1921–1996) examined in 1990 Sibelius's often ambivalent position – on the one hand the object of exaggerated hero worship, on the other the victim of violent criticism as a "local celebrity".

The composer Selim Palmgren walked a tightrope between national and international trends in music. He was part of the Finnish national music movement but tried to combine this with a more international outlook.