Tapio was the mythic god of Finland's northland forests and Tapiola his realm. Sibelius chose the subject for his last surviving orchestral work, commissioned in January 1926 by conductor Walter Damrosch for the New York Symphony Society Orchestra (shortly thereafter merged with the Philharmonic with Toscanini as music director). It was composed between March and May 1926, mostly on Italian holiday, was sent to his publishers in August, and was introduced by Damrosch on December 28 of that same year in New York City's Mecca Temple. If first reviews were mixed, including one by Sibelius' foremost stateside champion Olin Downes, in The New York Times, Tapiola was ranked as a crown jewel in the composer's trove within three years. It is his "last surviving orchestral work" because Sibelius did complete the first movement of an Symphony No. 8, which he sent to his copyist and, furthermore, wrote in 1934 that the Eighth was a finished work. Yet there is no surviving complete score. Tapiola, like the Symphony No. 4, is an austere work, stark in its depiction of a landmass then and since sparsely inhabited, heavily forested, and sunless for half the year. Heroes of the Kalevala never ventured that far north, stopping at Pohjola to woo daughters of Mistress Louhi. Sibelius prefaced the published score with these four lines printed in English, German, and French: "Wide-spread they stand, the Northland's dusky forests, Ancient, mysterious, brooding savage dreams; Within them dwells the Forest's mighty God, And wood-sprites in the gloom weave magic secrets." The principal key is B minor, and although a 20-bar introduction is marked Largamente, tempos thereafter alternate between Allegro moderato and Allegro. The music only seems to move slowly, even glacially, at moments. The work also seems monothematic, yet while several subjects derive from the main theme, Sibelius' genius produced an abundance of subtleties. No longer constricted by conventional structure, his mastery of orchestral nuance fashioned an entity of cohesion and singular coherence. Certainly one can hear wood-sprites, creatures other than humankind, but they are nonetheless thematic components of Sibelius' symphonic tapestry . The god Tapio reigns over all and all powerfully, if not happily by conventional mythic standards. When aroused for whatever reason, by whatever means, he unleashes storms of terrifying ferocity, with two of them here. Roaring brass chords in the first one are almost a tease, whereas the second, after an ominous silence, unleashes a non-accelerating crescendo that becomes a maelstrom of chromatic strings for 56 harrowing measures. Tapiola ends withal on three sostenuto chords in unambiguous B major, the last one a lingering decrescendo. Between 1927 and 1930, Sibelius wrote Music for a Masonic Ritual, Op. 113, plus a dozen salon pieces published as Opp. 114-116. In 1939, he made further (and final) revisions in the first and third of his Four Lemminkäinen Legends, Op. 22. But Tapiola remains the omega of his career as an orchestral composer, coming three decades before he died at the great age of 91.

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