Luonnotar (Sibelius)

70, is a single-movement tone poem for soprano and orchestra written in 1913 by the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius.

The piece is a setting of Runo I (lines 111–242, freely adapted) of the Kalevala, Finland's national epic, which tells the legend of how the goddess Luonnotar (the female spirit of nature) created the Earth.

A few months later on 12 January 1914, Ackté gave Luonnotar its Finnish premiere, with Georg Schnéevoigt conducting the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra.

Luonnotar is thematically unrelated to an earlier project of Sibelius's by the same name from 1903–1905; that 'Luonnotar' (for which a fragment is extant) grew out of the abandoned oratorio Marjatta (without catalogue number) and, by 1906, had evolved into the orchestral tone poem Pohjola's Daughter (Pohjolan tytär, Op. 49).

[3][4] Luonnotar is scored for the following instruments and voices,[2] organized by family (vocalists, woodwinds, brass, percussion, and strings): The Hungarian-American conductor Antal Doráti and the London Symphony Orchestra made the world premiere studio recording of Luonnotar in February 1969 for His Master's Voice (HMV); the soloist was the Welsh soprano Dame Gwyneth Jones.

An 11 January 1914 advertisement (in Swedish) from Nya Pressen promoting the Finnish premiere of Sibelius's Luonnotar