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To mark Finnish Independence Day – on December 6 1917, Finland ended its autonomy as a Grand Duchy within Russia and became a republic – the Â鶹ԼÅÄ SO’s Finnish Chief Conductor offers a programme by Finland’s greatest composer. Sibelius’s Press Celebrations Music contains what would later emerge as Finlandia which soon became a defiant unofficial national anthem. Guy Johnson plays two rarities for cello and orchestra, originally written in 1915 for church use, and which share the same opus number. The Â鶹ԼÅÄ SO’s Sibelius’s symphony cycle continues with the powerful First from 1899, a time when the Russian Emperor was flexing his muscles at the Finnish people, giving the music an almost political charge.