Oskar Merikanto was apparently a very popular composer in Finland during the years around 1900; the booklet notes tell of a Helsinki musician touring the countryside and being asked whether there were any other great composers in Helsinki besides Merikanto. Merikanto made a varied living of the sort undertaken by composers in nascent concert scenes, working as a pianist, church organist, "organ inspector" (whatever that was), conductor, critic, and teacher. He wrote about 150 songs, pleasant, foursquare creations with ...
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Oskar Merikanto was apparently a very popular composer in Finland during the years around 1900; the booklet notes tell of a Helsinki musician touring the countryside and being asked whether there were any other great composers in Helsinki besides Merikanto. Merikanto made a varied living of the sort undertaken by composers in nascent concert scenes, working as a pianist, church organist, "organ inspector" (whatever that was), conductor, critic, and teacher. He wrote about 150 songs, pleasant, foursquare creations with attractive melodies that have drawn comparisons to Paolo Tosti. They're not quite that far toward the popular end of the spectrum, but they don't sound like Sibelius at all, and they show minimal influence from any composer of German lieder after Schubert. Probably the closest comparison would be Tchaikovsky's songs: imagine the Nocturne, track 21, in Russian, and you can imagine that Merikanto started from some of the same Tchaikovskian sources Sibelius did, even if he went in a...
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