Cellist Seeli Toivio’s latest album features previously unrecorded Finnish works for cello and orchestra, shedding new light on the history of cello playing in Finland. Four of the works were composed between the 1930s and 1950s, while one dates from the early 2000s.

The works for cello and orchestra by Väinö Haapalainen, Lauri Saikkola and Väinö Rantanen are fine examples of the Finnish national style of their time. Haapalainen’s works for cello and orchestra, composed in 1930, were performed at a concert devoted to his music in Viipuri (Vyborg), with Väinö Raitamaa as the soloist. Despite their early popularity, these remarkable works, full of individuality and colour, have since fallen into complete obscurity.

Lauri Saikkola’s *Concerto in miniatura* received its world premiere on 25 October 1954, performed by the Helsinki Theatre Orchestra under the composer’s baton, with Vili Pullinen as soloist.

Väinö Rantanen’s (1904–1988) *Elegy* for cello and string orchestra, with its understated beauty, is a fine example of both the Finnish national style of its era and the elegance that characterises it.

Tommi Kärkkäinen (born 1969) studied composition with Paavo Heininen. His output includes both orchestral and chamber music. His four-movement *Cello Concerto* was composed in 2001 on commission from the Bergen Chamber Ensemble.

Composer Yrjö Gunaropulos (1904–1968) was born in St Petersburg but moved to Helsinki in the wake of the Russian Revolution. During the 1920s, he studied at the Helsinki Conservatory under Erkki Melartin, Leevi Madetoja and Otto Kotilainen. Among his compositions is an extensive *Cello Concerto in D minor* (1938), which received several performances by the Vaasa Orchestra, the Finnish Radio Orchestra and the Tampere Orchestra.

In February 1954, Gunaropulos’s home was destroyed by fire, along with a large number of his earlier compositions, including the Cello Concerto. After some twenty years of determined searching, the solo cello part was finally discovered in the possession of a friend living in Rovaniemi. Nothing else of the concerto had survived.

In spring 2020, Olli-Pekka Tuomisalo, who has an intimate knowledge of Gunaropulos’s music, composed an entirely new orchestral part to accompany the surviving solo part.