Had he not been cut down, whether by accident or design, at the age of 34 by a bullet during the celebrations at the end of the Finnish civil war, Toivo Kuula might have proved to be the great successor to Sibelius, who was twenty years his senior. But alas, his output is limited to two or three symphonic poems, a trio which remains very famous but is still essentially inspired by Franck (a relic of Kuula's years in Paris's Schola Cantorum), a symphony and a Stabat mater, both unfinished, and a handful of works inspired by Finnish national music – which surely mark the path he would have taken had he survived. These pieces for solo piano are (alas again!) by far the shortest of his completed works, and this is their first-ever recording. In them, we discover an original language, very much coloured by tints of Nordic folk music. Finnish pianist Jouni Somero (born 1963) had the brilliant idea of bringing these pearls out of their obscurity. © SM/Qobuz