Scott Morrison inquired on Aarre Merikanto:

>Can anyone describe his music for me? I know there is a recording of his
>opera, 'Juha', with Jorma Hynninen (one of my favorite singers), but I've
>not heard this, or any other of Merikanto's music.

Well I can not be of much help here as I only know the 2xCD in Finlandias
*meet the composer* series on Merikanto (1893-1958).  By the way for
anybody interested in Finish music these issues are a real bargain!  For
half the price of a *normal* CD you get 2 tightly filled CDs with usually
excellent performances!  The Merikanto discs feature 2 violin concertos
and a couple of shorter orchestral works.  Merikantos early works (from
the twenties) are in a kind of modernist/impressionist style (like the
2nd violin concerto on this recording).  In later works he wrote in a more
conservative neo-classical style.  In my opinion this is well crafted and
orchestrated music, harmonic and colourful but somehow missing something
particular that would raise it out of the mass of similar *good* music from
the first half of this century (in short:  good but not great!).  There
are a couple of CDs with his music on the Ondine label which might be
interesting to check out!

Achim Breiling