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http://www.bju.edu - Dan Turner conducts the Symphonic Wind Band. Program notes. . .

It is safe to say that the music of Jean Sibelius placed Finland on the world's musical map. In 1899 the great late-Romantic composer, always a staunch patriot, was asked to write music for a fundraising pageant that in reality was a protest against Russian domination and press censorship. Originally titled "Finland Awake," the music touched the collective national nerve; and in 1900 Sibelius published the piece as Finlandia. A masterpiece of the tone poem and highly nationalistic in character, the work moves from a foreboding and oppressed opening of low brass chords through sections of quiet reserve that are broken up by dramatic interjections. The theme, now known to many listeners as the hymn tune "Be Still My Soul" (4:50), eventually breaks through and grows in intensity to carry the work to a grand climax.