The great Finnish composer Jean Sibelius was born on this date in 1865.

In 1990, when the world was observing Sibelius’s 125th birthday, conductor Osmo Vänskä led the Lahti Symphony in the belated world-premiere performance of a previously unknown work by the composer. This was a Suite for Violin and Orchestra that Sibelius had probably completed in 1929, but never published or had performed.

Now, Sibelius was a very prolific composer up through his fifties, but during the last 30 years of his life before his death in 1957 wrote very little. He had completed his Seventh Symphony, his last, in 1924, and the world waited in vain for an Eighth. Perhaps it was due to depression, perhaps it was due to drink—or maybe, creatively speaking, Sibelius had just dried up. In any case, what works he did complete as a senior citizen were either revisions of much earlier pieces, or minor incidental works.

Which makes this genial little Suite, if composed fresh in 1929, rather interesting. It’s landscape music, evoking the Finnish countryside, but in a less bleak and abstract manner compared to his final large-scale works. It may not be top-drawer Sibelius, but even so, we’re grateful that Sibelius decided to stick his Suite for Violin in a bottom drawer—and not in the fireplace!