CD: Grieg & Sibelius: Songs: Mattila/ City of Birmingham Symphony/ Oramo

Hidden within this collection of orchestral songs by Grieg and Sibelius, delivered by Karita Mattila with sumptuous tone and accompanied by Sakari Oramo and the CBSO, is a tumultuous performance of a singular masterpiece.

The creation myth of Luonnotar, from the first section of the Kalevala and describing the maiden of the skies, who descends to earth and promptly gets involved with a duck, belongs in the front rank of Sibelius's tone poems.

The sheer dramatic charge behind the soprano writing gives just a taste of what a mature Sibelius opera might have been like Mattila unleashes every scrap of that potential, with Oramo steadily ratcheting up the intensity.