No composer in the history of music could have had a more unusual start to life than Uuno Klami. He was born in 1900 in a remote part of Finland near to the Russian border. His parents were not musical, and in this part of the world there was no active musical life. Yet at elementary school he one day proudly announced he was going to be a composer. It was to be a difficult path to travel, his father dying when he was three, and his mother when he was sixteen. He had to leave school at fifteen, but somehow made his way to Helsinki where he alternately worked and studied at the Helsinki College of Music. It was to take him nine years to complete his studies there.

In the spring of 1924 he travelled to Paris and was fortunate enough to meet Ravel and Florent Schmitt, who helped and encouraged him. Still not content with his education he went to spend a year in Vienna. By now he was almost thirty, and though some of his student works had given optimism to his future, he still h