Shortly before he died, Jean Sibelius spotted the talent inherent in the music of a bright young Finnish composer by the name of Einojuhani Rautavarra, even helping him pursue his studies in the United States. Nearly 60 years later, Rautavarra repaid some of that debt orchestrating a set of seven Sibelius songs in a cycle he called In the Stream of Life.

The midwife to this act was Canadian bass-baritone Gerald Finley. Rautavarra had written his Rubáiyát for the singer who had become first a colleague and then a friend, so the multilingually ambitious Finley naturally turned to Rautavaara when looking for some Sibelius songs to sing with orchestra. The results are here on this superb Chandos disc, poignantly recorded last year the very week of Rautavaara’s funeral, and accompanied by the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra under a magnificent Edward Gardner.

A marriage of true minds, the choice of songs was clearly personal to Rautavarra, but the subjects are also pure Sibelius exhibiting the elder Finn’s fascination with nature and folklore and his yearning for the empty landscape. The orchestrations are quite magical and delicate, full of gestures that are typical Rautavarra – diatonic string chords, sinuous woodwind...