It’s weird, if wonderful, that vibrant young composers at the end of the 19th century should have featured death so prominently in their hero-sagas. Assume their inspiration came from Wagner’s Siegmund, Siegfried and Tristan. But Sibelius, Mahler and Richard Strauss took very different paths on the route to obliteration. That’s only one of many things that helps to make Hannu Lintu’s three-year exploration of Sibelius in the context of his predecessors and contemporaries so fascinating.

Out of innumerable Rite of Springs in half a century of concert-going, I’ll stick my neck out and say this was the most ferocious in execution, the richest in sound. Others may have wanted a faster, lighter Rite. But the two things that make every concert conducted by Klaus Mäkelä so extraordinary are that he inhabits the music to a visibly high level, and that he gets the fullest tone and urgent phrasing from every instrument.

This autumn, the Philharmonia’s “Nordic Soundscapes” season promises music suffused with the epic vistas, and weather, of high latitudes, along with reflections on the climate crisis as it threatens the traditional bonds between nature and culture. So far, so piously programmatic. But what difference can such a high-minded schema make to the music made by the orchestra’s outdoorsy Finnish maestro, Santtu-Mathias Rouvali, and his colleagues? 

Some pointers suggest how Finland’s Shadowplay might sound. They took their name from a Joy Division song. Their key founder member was Brandi Ifgray – born Visa Ruokonen. He had been in the final line-up of first-generation Finnish punk band Ratsia. Add in Shadowplay’s 1988 first album Touch and Glow’s cover version of Gang Of Four’s “Damaged Goods” and that would seem to nail it. Dark then, with the edge of punk.

In Finland Tarja Turunen is an institution. There, she’s regarded as a kind of heavy rock-flavoured fusion of Sarah Brightman and Maria Carey. She first came to prominence as the multi-octave singer for symphonic metal kingpins Nightwish but, since they rancorously parted ways with her in 2005, she’s still maintained a strong career.

Fallen Leaves is Aki Kaurismäki’s 20th film, the one the Finnish director made after he said he’d retired from cinema in 2017 and frankly, if you didn’t like his earlier films, you shouldn’t bother with this one. But if you’re a fan (and I am and so was the Cannes jury which gave it the Fipresci prize), Fallen Leaves is an utter pleasure from beginning to end. 

For Finnish composer Osmo Lindeman, the decision to pursue electronic music was made in 1968 during a visit to Poland. He had recently started using graphical notation for the scores of his compositions and was having problems getting conductors and orchestras to follow what he wanted.

Presented to you by Channel 4’s industrious Walter, Enemy of the People is a punchy Finnish drama which makes some smart and timely observations about life in the age of digital money and poisonous social media.

To create a sensitive and original music-drama around the subject of a school killing is a colossal achievement. Director Simon Stone, set designer Chloe Lamford and novelist Sofi Oksanen’s cutting libretto make Innocence seem like a masterpiece. I wish I were less ambivalent about Kaija Saariaho’s score.

Sibelius and Mahler so often figure as the irreconcilable chalk and cheese of turn-of-the-century orchestral writing that it can be a salutary experience to hear them together on one bill.