Finland: Savonlinna

Our tour of the interlinked islands of Savonlinna in south-east Finland begins with the medieval castle of Ovanlinna, the venue nowadays for an international opera festival, and the town of Savonlinna that has developed round it for the last four hundred years.The music is by Sibelius, the greatest of Finnish composers, who single-handedly created a national music evoking the traditional epics of Finnish history and legend. We hear the first of seven surviving symphonies and the symphonic poem En Saga (“A Story”).